Daughter of the Witcher Ch. 06

***I finally get something up for Hallowe'en! I've only been trying to for the past two Hallowe'ens but I always miss.

Not anything really scary, but I'll try to stuff that in for the next chapter. Then again, if you look at the tags, you might get a little nervous all the same.

Readers here might have noticed that I haven't really written much about vampires. They just don't do all that much for me, that's all. Not much of them in this chapter, but, ...

There's a tag about gay male stuff, just so you know that it's there, but I don't wander very far there. I just don't want to read comments that I ought to have warned folks. Nothing much anyway. If you can't read that, I'd say you have a phobia and it's not a main part of this anyway.

I don't even really know why I wrote it this way, but then sometimes my characters just end up however they wanted to be, I guess.

I wrote this with the thought in mind that the storyline had to carry it, so that overshadows everything else.

So, here we join the rest of Louhi's family. Remember them? Well now they're back in ...

Well just read it, 'kay?

0_o

-------------------------

Gunnar was concerned as he stood on the windy promontory of stone and looked around. Something was wrong or perhaps more correctly, something wasn't right in the neighborhood.

Deciding to leave Finland months earlier, he and Margit had talked it over and she'd raised the thought to go back to the old stronghold in the Carpathian Mountains where they'd spent a couple of winters so long ago. Gunnar had nodded, liking the notion and their son Koten had indicated that he didn't care where they went, he'd go along.

The three of them didn't really attract anyone's attention as they traveled and before long -- only a few months, they were back in those same mountains once more.

But finding the place that they sought had been a challenge, and no matter how they searched, they found no sign of it and gave up the hunt after a time. Their language issues with the few people that they met only compounded things. One of the rare leads they received turned out to be a misinterpretation of what Gunnar had asked, and the three found themselves standing on an overgrown pathway, looking up at something else entirely.

"Well, we are here," Gunnar said, "and the weather turns colder with each day. We need to be somewhere, so I think to go and ask to learn what I can."

But the thought of standing on a windy and unfamiliar path didn't warm Margit's heart at all, so she said that they might as well all go up together. The path itself wasn't steep but it was long and winding, doubling back onto itself often along its course. It was wide enough for a wagon and a team of horses but not very much more at all.

When they found the small ridge and crested it, they stared at a rather small vale where there looked to have once been some farming, though now it looked unkempt and overgrown. Behind that and built in such a way as to back onto the very face of a high rock pinnacle, there stood a keep which looked dark and foreboding. It took Gunnar only a few moments of thought and sensing to learn that there were no inhabitants anymore.

As they approached, they looked at the remains of the planted crops and even saw what was left of an overgrown and now quite-wild vineyard. Gunnar stopped and looked around for a moment.

"This is not too far-gone yet," he nodded, "I think that it has only been a few years like this. See the shape of the valley. It shelters the crops from the winds. No doubt, the land here gets its fair share of snow in the winter, but, ... "

Koten pointed with a bit of a smile, "Look. There is a small lake, or maybe it is a large pond."

Whatever it was, they guessed that there must be a depression in the bedrock and the runoff from the melting snow had caused the water to accumulate. Large or small, lake or pond, it was good water, so there must have been a natural equilibrium which kept it free from turning into a stagnant mess and its shoreline came close to the outer wall of the keep.

There was a small sluice which ran out from under the wall down a tortured path to join the lake and another like it which seemed to come from farther off along the wall. Gunnar stepped over and bent on one knee for a moment.

"There has been no waste along here for a time," he said, "and there must be a well inside for this to flow outward."

But how to get inside?

The gates were shut and appeared to be bolted from the within. No surprise there, he thought.

Gunnar felt a little of things as they stood before the silent walls.

"Monks," he said finally, "An order of monks of some sort lived here."

With the thought now in mind, he looked around and saw a few details in the stonework; symbology which was subtle and yet now made perfect sense. He stepped over to a spot on one of the main doors and lifted the square of leather there.

Under that were notices, mostly in Latin, detailing the upcoming observances of several feast days relating to the time of year. The most recent, dated some four years prior mentioned the abandonment of the cloister due to pestilence.

"The plague," he said in a low voice, "This place has been visited by death. From what I read here, the last seven surviving left four years ago."

He stood looking up for a moment and then he strode back a little in order to see more of the structures.

"Something does not ring true here," he said, "See the walls, topped with slots from which to defend with bows." He looked further then, "Many portals and the majority are places from which an archer might shoot in defense and not risk much of himself while doing it.

And look there, ... and there, ... and there, turrets.

What sort of holy order walls itself in and builds as though it is ready to defend against, ... what?

Everything here is made to defend against something or someone and their army. What sort of monks were these?

You can see that whoever dwelt here, not all were here to fight. Many of the windows are glazed, crudely it must be said, but even so, some effort must have been made to hold in a little heat -- or to keep the cold out, more likely."

Koten stood with his father and looked, but at that moment, his attention was drawn to one window in particular, one that was rather high up in a different building. He forced his gaze to drift along the wall up there as though he'd seen nothing.

"Father, up in that wall there, ...

Do not make as though to look directly, but there is someone there. I think it is a woman. She looks to have light hair, but she does not look old to me. I am certain that if you look straight there, she will pull away and be gone."

Gunnar swept the wall with his gaze and kept going right past the window in question.

He looked down then, as though inspecting his boots for a moment.

"Another thing wrong," he muttered, "I sense none living inside here, not one," he looked up and the figure moved out of sight.

"Though, ..." his head tilted as he considered, "there is at least one living horse inside of the walls. It cannot be so."

They walked along the outside of the wall and saw that there was no moat or emplacements of sharpened stakes set to break a cavalry charge. Eventually, they found a window hole over ten feet from the ground and leading into what Gunnar surmised might have been a guardhouse not far from the gate.

He looked around for a moment. "Well, standing here will buy us nothing but the cold of the night in a few hours. Aside from your apparition in the wall window, there is no one here living to stop us. We may as well call to visit."

It came as no surprise, but there were no answers to their calls and Koten stood on the back of his horse as Gunnar held it still. He watched his son climb up and disappear inside through the window.

Almost ten minutes later, Gunnar and Margit heard the bolts being removed from behind the gates and they swung outward on their dry hinges, moaning a little.

"There are cases," Koten remarked quietly as his parents led their horses and wagon inside, "All told," he said, "I count nine of these boxes here in the courtyard.

Gunnar looked them over, "I think that these are sarcophagi, though what they are doing here inside the wall of a fortified cloister is beyond me just now."

He waved his hand toward the walls and the defenses in general, "This is something very strange. Wherever men live, if they can, they erect defensive structures to provide them, their families and their followers or their vassals some protection.

Holy men might do this if they felt that they had something within the walls which required protecting. But look well. The art of building these things - over such a size as this, ... this costs much gold to have erected, and more, this is not an old thing. This cannot be built by mere laborers. To have made this, someone needed money to attract the skilled men who can build such things. Whoever they were, these were not only a group of fearful monks."

They spent the next hour just looking around in and through the structures, but they found little, and what they did find were more mysteries for Gunnar to think about. He'd seen the structures of a holy order to be sure, but more than that, he'd seen several halls of weaponry. His trip up the ladder to the top of one of the turrets showed him that whoever had dwelt here had been more than prepared to defend it. There were four turrets, and atop every one, there stood a trebuchet to hurl stones or other objects great distances.

And they saw no sign of a horse.

He took his team of horses and over the next two hours, they began to drag the sealed coffins outside of the gates.

"What are you doing?" Margit asked after she'd watched it for long enough.

"I sense something, ... unwholesome about the whole affair - the leaving of these things inside and under the awnings. I think to live here now -- since we have found nothing better and winter comes. Night comes even sooner and I want these gone. The dead are not to be kept with the living."

"But, ... "Margit began, "we do not even know the rites to be said when one buries someone, and I do not think that you will find enough free dirt out here to dig graves deep enough."

Gunnar nodded, "That is why I will send them off in our way. A pyre wastes no land."

It was a lot of sweat, but with the sun nearing the horizon, they had all of the things outside and in a group. There was enough half-rotted straw around to use for a pyre if one added only a little wood, and they had a quantity of oil to use in order to get the flames started.

One by one, Gunnar lifted the stone lids with a long bar and poured in a little of the oil.

"Will you not look inside beforehand?" Margit asked and Gunnar shook his head as he lit the first one.

"They are only dead, Margit, and I do not know them. I think they ought to thank me for doing what someone else has left undone."

The flames licked their way inside of the first sarcophagus and then the screams began. What arose out of the coffin was a tortured-looking apparition, flailing in agony and still showing some of the signs of the plague.

Gunnar stood holding out his hands as he intoned an ancient rite in Suomi.

The apparition rose on a column of flame and passed out of sight.

Knowing a little better what the others held, Gunnar and Koten levered the rest further open while there was still sunlight and dispatched the rest all together. It took only minutes and when the echoes of the shrieking cries faded, the vale fell silent once more.

"Birds," the witcher said after a time, "Now that I think on it, I have not heard the cry or the croak of one single bird since we came over the rise."

The others stopped and turned, listening for a moment.

"There," Koten pointed, "I hear the evening calls of a bird or two now, out near the rise."

Gunnar nodded, "I do not know why, but it was as though something caused them to fear to come here. Now I hear them, as you say. Come, It was not my want to mark the time of our arrival this way, but let us find places to eat and pass the night. The horses need to be seen to first."

They walked in through the gates and barred them.

-----------------------------------

They were busy there over the next month. During that time, they saw few people, only a traveler or two along the road through the valley down below the rise.

There wasn't much required of the place other than to find out the extent of it all and then dust and sweep out what was found. They found no more corpses or the remains of any other of the inhabitants. Margit and Gunnar decided on what part of it was the best to live in and then they just set up there.

But it was far too late by then to plant anything and though they had plenty of wood to heat the relatively small area that they'd chosen as winter quarters, they were still alive and living people require food. So before the first of the bitter winter storms raged through the mountains and sealed them in, Gunnar and his wife took the wagon and the pair of horses and left.

There was a town not far off down the road and they soon had plenty of provisions, though Gunnar planned to make a second trip the next day. He wanted some proper feed for the horses as well.

But this time, the pair came to the attention of a few of the locals and though it was in two separate conversations, Gunnar had stumbled upon people who could speak Latin.

"You live where?" one man asked in a good deal of surprise, "That place has been abandoned for years now. The plague came and they proved themselves to us at last by barring their gates and shutting us all out.

They left us, their poor unwashed neighbors, to fend for ourselves as best we could. If you are there now, then you are welcome to it, to my mind.

Here, there is not much land in that little vale but what there is can grow many things and well. If you last through until the spring, I think that some of us will be buying things from you, my friend.

He looked off for a moment as a memory came to him, "The wine that used to come from there, ... as sweet as the dew from a maiden's ... well, you know what I mean to say, uh?"

He laughed a little, "I am glad to have met you and I wish you the best up there."

"What can you tell me of the ones who lived there before?" Gunnar asked.

The man's brow wrinkled for a moment as he thought. "Not all that much, I am afraid. The place up there was built during my great-grandfather's time. He used to make a bit of money hauling things down from there - rubble mostly, that was cleared away to make room for the keep.

He told my grandfather once that they were knights who came to make their fortress there in order to guard a thing of some kind. We've all heard the tale or parts of it. They brought something there which had to be kept there, something powerful and magical. The knights were to keep it safe by force of arms and they came with holymen who were to keep it hidden in some old religious way."

He chuckled a little, "But I am not one who would know much of that sort of thing. I live in the here and the now and I have little use for legends -- other than perhaps to listen to on a cold and stormy winter's night with a good hot cup of spirits.

I do not imagine that whatever it was is still there. The knights either died out or left, and then there were only the holymen and other than to sell us a little wine now and again, we never saw them. They kept themselves aloof and separate from us. Once or twice, they tried to get us all to attend their masses on a Sunday, but we have our own priests and it's a long way to go to get up there, so they weren't very successful.

They say the place is haunted," he nodded, "Have you seen anything, ghosts or what have you?"

Gunnar said nothing about the sarcophagi or their contents, and the things were lying broken for the most part in a heap off to one side at the edge of some woods.

Well he grew tired of looking at them after a week or so.

To the man, he only shook his head. He didn't mention the woman in the window either. None of them had seen her again.

-----------------------------------

At that instant, Koten was knocking the branches from a tree that he'd felled a few minutes earlier. He walked along the length of the trunk with his axe, removing what he wanted off and setting that aside. They wasted nothing, but he wanted to separate the good logs -- once he'd sawn them to length -- from the branches, so those had to come off first to be set aside.

He heard the quiet snort of a horse and looked up after a moment.

There was a young woman with light ash-colored hair sitting on a horse, watching him from not more than thirty feet away.

She sat comfortably in the saddle and she wore a mixture of clothing; some cloth, some leather, and some looked to have been stitched together from various animal hides to look at the fur. What Koten took to be her jacket or short coat was made of white rabbit fur.

Her lower left sleeve bore a piece of leather which looked to be tied on in a way against the inside of her forearm and he took it to mean that it was her arm guard against the bowstring.

He gathered that because at the moment, she was holding an almost fully drawn bow on him.

He looked at her face and he saw the absence of a lot of different emotions there. She didn't appear to be angry or frightened or any of a number of things.

She did look fairly interested in him, though. It looked to him as though she was sizing him up in some way.

He set the head of his axe down against the trunk of the tree and he leaned on the end of the handle a little casually as he looked back at her.

"So this is what you look like," the woman said in her natural tongue, "And what am I to do with one like you?"

He didn't understand any of it, but the odd sound of her voice and the even and unperturbed gaze there in her amber eyes took Koten a little by surprise. As well, it had rained for a time that morning and everything was still slick and damp from the cold rain, the tree trunk and the metal of the axe head included.

As he tried not to stare openly, his axe slipped from the trunk and it caused him to almost lose his balance. Koten didn't fall, though it was a near thing, saved only by a few wild and slightly frantic gyrations as he tried to keep his nose from being the first point of his unceremonious landing.

The young woman laughed a little in spite of herself as she smiled, "Well, there is the question of natural grace solved, I think.

It seems that you have little of it."

"I do not understand you," he said in Suomi.

"What are you trying to say?" she replied, "I cannot get it."

He tried his poor and recently-acquired Romanian, and she could barely make out words and not his meaning as she grew a little frustrated.

"Speak plainly if you can, fool," she said in Latin," I have little time for this."

He looked down for a moment and then back up at her, "I think that I look more the fool than I wish to appear."

She smiled at that, nodding that they'd found a language that they both knew, "It is my hope that there is more balance to you than I have seen. Now, has anyone entrusted you with a name so that you might say it when you are not falling down?"

"I am Koten Fornjot," he said evenly as he regained his composure, "Who are you, and why have you stayed hidden for so long?"

She didn't offer a name and only shrugged, "I come and go -- and allow myself to be seen -- when it is my wish. Why have you stayed at the fortress? There is only disease and evil in that place."

Koten decided that he'd done quite enough damage to his dignity thus far into the meeting and he'd noticed that she gave no name and seemed to have a bit of a self-righteous air to her, so he shrugged and began to go back to lopping off branches.