The Weaver's Source

Chapter 108

Lillith bounded above the snow, never leaving a foot print behind and never slowing down in the wind and snow. The only times she stopped through the day was to let me relieve myself or slowed to a trot to let me eat otherwise I clung onto her, willing her to go faster as the loped onwards. With each hour my magic grew restless and frightened. With each minute that passed, my fear for Grigore grew. I wanted to be with him, helping him. But I was stuck on Lillith's back, waiting for the time that dreaded fort would loom before me.

Around late afternoon, Lillith carried me close to a strange sight. Ahead I saw a cluster of people and a thick trail of footsteps with blood crushed into the snow. I frowned and, when Lillith veered right, determined to evade the group, I gripped her horn and tilted her head back, demanding her to go close. She complied without a word and bounded onwards.

Swiftly we were on top of them and I couldn't help the small cry of disgust. Marching in lame limps and jerking shuffles was the remnants of Astor. They were nothing but corpses now, all wards of that gave them a mask of life had faded. Pale putrefying faces, green decaying flesh, bared red bones and bloodied clothes with a stinking cloud of rot surrounding them, the grim march paid no attention to Lillith and I as they headed onwards. Not one of the white congealed eyes turned to us.

I quickly saw enough and whispered to Lillith to hurry and she sped up, taking me away quickly from the dead of Astor.

The day wore on and the sun sunk beneath the sky and thickening clouds and snow began to fall again. It billowed and swirled incessantly with the wind picking up and howling and the snow turning into tiny lumps of ice. But Lillith never slowed. She tore onwards as I huddled against her neck, trying to shield myself from the bitter wailing wind, squeezing my eyes shut against the hail and snow.

I must've fallen asleep at some point. I wasn't sure how. Sitting up on Lillith was hurting my back and the cold was making me shiver violently and the storm had been loud and horrible, whistling in my ears and stinging my eyes. But the next thing I knew, it was dawn and the storm had cleared.

With heavy eyes, I blinked and rubbed my mouth while my body hummed with discomfort.

"Lillith, how far now?" I asked sleepily.

'Not far. You can see the fort on the hoizon.' Lillith's voice hummed in my mind.

I looked up at my heart twisted when I saw that she was right. On the horizon, with hundreds of snow covered rocks and a sheet of white separating us, was the crumbling remains of a long abandoned fort. The dreaded fort from my dreams.

My magic squirmed unhappily, humming and groaning in my chest. Grigore was there. I knew he was. His scent was getting stronger in the air and he was in danger. My magic was screaming louder than ever. I just hoped he'd only just jumped into the battle and wasn't starved of magic and wounded fatally. The thought terrified me. All I could think about was Grigore, wounded and covered in black warm blood, dying because I wasn't there to give him his strength.

Lillith drew closer rapidly and soon I could see how tall the walls and towers were, how broken and scorched from old fires with their mortar crumbling from age and weather. A lot of the towers were destroyed from fires or pulled apart by the dragon that had attacked it, leaving them black and gaping. The wall itself was massive, surrounding the fort powerfully still, but there were holes in it here and there, packed with mountains of icy snow. And it is up these hills that Lillith took me, carrying me to the top of the wall with ease.

I looked down from her back, quickly trying to pick out Grigore. There were so many bodies littered in the wide courtyard and filled with rotten frames from the remains of stables, huts and barricades. I could see the half of what had been a smithy and the skeletons of other store rooms and sleeping quarters. And the walking dead were everywhere, standing in clumps here and there. Most were skeletons, wearing old scorched armour and holding notched swords in their grey bones, magic keeping every bone tethered to one another, acting as muscle and flesh. Some others were fresh corpses, with their flesh still clinging to their bodies, and were littered in the same charms Ursus was dressed in and armour no knight would wear.