Hammerhold Tales: Thrallborn

Chapter Nine

Sawain rummaged through the cargo the gnolls had brought into the temple. Most of it was rancid meat and weapons, mostly rusty daggers and swords. He decided to pull the leather breastplate off one of the fallen beasts that looked roughly his size. It was damp, spattered with blood, and smelled awful, but it offered him more protection than the coat alone did, so he put it on. Disappointment welled in his chest as he dug through the gnollish haul. It looked more like they were setting up a camp than a raider's hideout.

A campfire smoldered on the stone floor in the center of the room. He realized his wet condition meant that going out into the cold could kill him again, so he used some of the crates to rekindle the fire and sat down by the blaze to rest a bit. He closed his eyes and fell asleep quickly. He awoke with a start. It felt as if he only closed his eyes and drifted off for a moment, but when he looked around, all that remained of his fire was ashes, though his garments were dry.

He left the main chamber and felt his way through the dark corridors of the sunken temple until he managed to find the entrance again. Sunlight poured into the antechamber from outside. Sawain stood in the room, squinting until his vision adapted to the sudden change. He climbed to the doorway, feeling the cold wind on his face. The frigid wave of air revived his spirit further and awoke in him his desire for adventure. He poked his head outside to make sure the coast was clear.

No sign of the gnolls, no trace of Hilmr, remained. The hills sounded peaceful enough, with the occasional bird song flitting through the sky. The sun was well into its progress across its domain, sinking toward the west. Sawain would not be able to get far before the gnoll hunting packs would be active again. He could not stay in the temple either, since Hilmr might return with a larger posse to finish whatever work Sawain had interrupted. He also noted the ominous black clouds moving in from the north. The temperature had dropped since he delved into the temple, and frost appeared in arcing patterns across the ground foliage.

Sawain broke from his shelter within the temple and plunged into the thorny wood he first emerged from, following his path backward from the night before. Once he was back in the briar thicket, he tried to work out the path he took before encountering the gnolls, with little success. He wandered for hours in the wood, running into countless dead ends of briar thickets so large, he would be torn to shreds if he had tried to break through them. It grew darker and darker with each frustrating delay. Finally, just as darkness set in, whether by divine providence or sheer luck, Sawain found the Alfhaven Road.

The stars began their nightly dance in the heavens as Sawain cut hard westward, back to Anvilheim. He had urgent news of betrayal to deliver to the Segrammir. The cold winter night air was sharper than even the blades that had torn at his flesh the night before. It filled his lungs with air heavy as lead and scored them with a thousand icy needles. His numb hands gripped tightly the treasonous letter from Jordborg. He could hear the already frozen ground crunching beneath his boots. He had to press on through the sharp pain inside and outside of his body.

The clouds he noted before stole over the starry sky within the hour, whipping up frigid bursts of wind that chilled Sawain to his core. He began to worry about the possibility of snow. If it snowed, he wondered if he could handle it, equipped as he was. Hammerhold winters, even in the Fells, could bring hard freezes that would turn all but the best prepared into icy corpses. His other concern came in the form of how easily he could be tracked, leaving footprints in the snow.

The first flurries of the storm stung his face as he struggled up a large hill that lead into the valley of Vigils, where Fort Vigilant stood as a dedicated sentinel over the borderlands east of Anvilheim. When he made it to the top of the hill and looked down into the valley, a chill filled him from head to toe that had nothing to do with winter's presence.