The Hammer Unfalls

4.79 Batten No Hatches

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Glim dropped to the ground and looked around at the growing assembly of onlookers. It reminded him of his return from his previous unannounced absence, only with less sympathy and more resentment.

Long black hair whipping in a stiff breeze, his father stepped towards him, his face more grim than Glim had ever seen it, with hurt and concern warring in his eyes.

“I’m getting tired of this game of yours, son.” The guards around him nodded in agreement, looking at Glim with lips pulled taut into hard lines.

Glim stood silent, quivering in frustration. He pointed to his throat and shook his head.

The raven shook itself and clicked its tongue before speaking. “Suck-umm to apathy! Suck-umm forever!”

Annoyance crossed his father's face at the bird’s interruption. “Speak up. Where have you been?”

Again the raven answered. “In frost’s breff!” Glim’s mouth moved silently in frustration, trying to form half-remembered words.

“One of Master Willow's tricks, I take it? Get this squawking beast away, Glim.”

The raven croaked in indignation. Glim knelt and untied the cage, holding it aloft. “Nae, faw-ther. Hear thiss… bird. It awakens the unhearing!”

The guards looked at each other with obvious concern, now twinged with fear. Some of them made warding signs. Garrick among them. “Are you possessed by this beast, lad?” the armorer asked, eyeing the raven warily. It extended its wings in the cage barely wide enough to fit. A deep rasp came from the raven as it glared at Garrick.

“Nae, Gawwick. Squawk! It hears…my… voice? And wails.”

His father spoke to a guard. “Fetch the Mage-at-Arms at once.” The guard nodded, just as a watchman ran up to the captain, out of breath.

“The Mage-at-Arms left the south gate on a horse with the gardeners just before sunrise. Said it was urgent.”

“Where was he headed?”

The guard shrugged.

His father’s face reddened. He paced back and forth, then grabbed the rope. “Why are you scaling towers instead of telling me of your return?” He yanked the rope. A metallic scraping sound came from above.

Glim’s eyes widened. He dropped the birdcage and slammed his father against the wall. The sword crashed to the ground where they’d just stood.

“You trusted yourself to that? What the hell is going on with you, boy? You could have been killed!” the captain’s voice rose in an uncharacteristic display of anger. In desperation Glim relaxed his mind. Focus. Find the words.

“Locked.” The raven grumbled and repeated itself. “Locked. Locked in towwwer. Had to… fly. Had to… land.”

A sliver of understanding came into his father’s eyes. “Master Willow possessed this bird with your voice, locked you in his tower, and left?”

“Aye, faw-ther.”

“But why?’

“Silenced by fear. Caw! The unhearing flee! The unhearing hear no more!” Glim’s eyes watered and he tried again. “Certe’s course can nae be wrested!”

“This is getting us nowhere. You two. Mount up and find out what Willow is up to. Ride hard. Tell him he’s needed here immediately. The gardener outranks me in times of peace. I’m no longer certain we are in times of peace.”

The raven fluttered in agitation. “Aye faw-ther! The eye of certainty! The eye of certainty comes. Warped beasts! Wawl of grey!”

The guards turned to leave. Glim stepped in front of them and grabbed one by the arm, looking at him with tears on his cheeks. “Minds numbed. Only vengeance remains.” He picked up the sword and shook it, ignoring the tensing of the guards reaching for their own swords, then drew a line over his own throat with his fingertips. The raven shuddered. “Suck-umm forever.”

The guards backed away, staring at Glim in apprehension, then ran towards the stables.

Glim’s father turned to Garrick and sighed. “We’ve already doubled the watch. Not much more we can do. Let’s get Glim to quarters and see what we can learn.”

--------------- ~~~ *** ~~~ ---------------

Garrick dropped his head to the wooden dining table and thunked it three times before groaning his frustration.

“We’ve been at this for hours. His mind is addled. The lad needs a children’s picture book. Perhaps that will loosen his tongue.”

“It’s not a bad idea.” The captain looked at Glim with fading hope.

Glim knew the unspoken concern behind his father’s frown. With a sense of detachment, Glim watched the men talking about him with an urgency he no longer shared. He’d arrived home. He’d warned them the best he could. He could not articulate the danger, Master Willow had fled, and they had no means to fight the giant anyway.

Just give up.

The darkness comforted him, like a soothing hand cooling a fever away from his forehead. He’d missed it’s clarity. It’s truth. The logic of inevitability, which gave him permission to relinquish the fight.

Everyone is lost. Everyone. Here. Everywhere.

They’d tried everything. Pleading. Yelling. Gyda had left after trying her best too, holding his hand and kissing him, right in front of father. Glim had tried his best to comfort her in these last moments of life. But the raven’s words had only made her more distraught. He imagined kissing her grinning skull one last time and lapsed into silence.

Not verbal silence, of course, but a silence within himself. Glim settled in his chair. As comfortable a place to die as any, he supposed.

Two guards walked in, clearly agitated.

“Summer storms are the worst,” the first said.

“Not seen one this bad since I was a lad,” the other agreed. “Captain Jarl, we need to gather extra wood. Storm coming. A bad one.”

The raven opened its eyes and shook itself from its stupor. “Cawwk! Wawl of grey.”

Startled, the captain turned his head and stared at the bird. “Do it. We have to be ready. If my son’s plight is any indication, it’s going to be a rough one.”

A tremor in the ground stirred Glim. The chair no longer pleased him. If he was going to die, at least he’d die a guard, starting the enemy in the face. He stood and walked out of the room. Garrick and his father followed.

A fierce wind whipped Glim’s hair into his own eyes. His tunic caught like a banner in a gale. He walked to a rampart and looked out over a gray sky churning with clouds. Flocks of geese fled its path. Tiny black specks, flapping futilely. Glim watched with mild interest as the specks grew larger. The storm was moving fast. They didn’t have much time.

The raven spread its wings and shrieked into the wind. “A candle flickers in frost's first breff. The candle speaks only breff!” The raven shouted its diatribe, bashing against the cage. “Caw! Fawther, no storm comes! Batten no hatches! Stoke no fires! Flee! We must flee!”

“Flee? This is a fortress! Where better to go than here? Please, son! Tell us… what is coming?”

Another tremor shook the fortress. Longer than the first, and stronger.

“Quawkk! Eye of Certainty. Fawther Certe. The Fawther comes!”

“I need a little more than that, son. Is it a wild mage? Barbarians? The storm will drive them right this way by the look of it.”

Glim struggled even more desperately to find the words. What would they understand? They had no way to know that essentiæ had taken a different name. Certe would mean nothing to them.

Of course! With as much clarity as he could muster, staring directly into his father’s eyes, Glim nodded to the raven.

“Father Algidon! Its is… algidon that comes!”

Garrick whistled. “A wild mage it is, then. Bad luck. With Willow gone, we’ll have our hands full.”

In a sudden burst of light, the edges of the onrushing clouds flared white, reminding Glim of cracks in a broken flagstone. The billowing gradients of rounded cloud glowed white and gray with fierce beauty.

Glim waited for the lightning strike to subside. But it didn’t. The clouds continued to seethe with an inner light, which emerged from the top of the storm like a spire.

Another shaft of light streamed into the sky, bathing the mountains around it in silver light. Wider than the first. Closer. When a third beacon ignited, where the nearest Elderkin tower to Wohn-Grab stood, Garrick and his father looked at each other in horror.

BRRRRRRRRMMMMMMM!

They jumped at the sudden sound. One Glim recognized. The rampart lit up with incandescent light, casting flickering shadows of the guards onto the wall. Glim turned around to see the top of Master Willow’s tower scintillating with a whirling, brilliant beam that lanced into the sky.

Garrick stared at the tower with a look Glim had never seen on the man’s face: pure terror. “After all this time?” he said, voice choked with panic.

Glim’s father closed his eyes, and his shoulders sagged. After a moment he straightened, and beckoned to a nearby guard. “Send riders to Cantleport and Hammerfall. We need to warn them. Whatever we’re supposed to be guarding against has finally arrived.”