Fire And Lies

Chapter 4

Chapter 4“You look like uskit.”

Rune flashed Bergen a worn out gaze from beneath the dried blood smeared across his face. Silently, Rune trudged to Astrid, passed the horse the apple's core, then found a bowl beside a barrel filled with water.

“Well?” Bergen asked, once Rune finished washing his face.

In silence, Rune finished scrubbing then walked toward the mass of firelight. Bergen followed, falling in behind Rune.

“Go to sleep, Bergen,” Rune said, trudging to his bed.

“Is she dead?”

“She isn't dead,” Rune said.

Matching his brother's pace, Bergen twisted back to the forest as if the trees would tell him what he desired to know. His grip tightened on the hilt of his sword.

“Where is she?” Bergen asked. Slowing his pace, he fell behind.

“She's coming,” Rune said, not bothering to look back or stop. He kept his head bowed and continued to his bedroll.

Bergen stopped to search the empty woods. The night encased the space between each tree with shadows that stretched like deep pools of black. With moistened palms, he quietly cursed his unforgotten ghosts.

“No, she isn't,” Bergen called back to Rune.

“She will,” Rune said. His voice was barely audible as he clomped from view into the sea of bedrolls and campfires.

Perplexed, Bergen searched the shadows a while longer. Alone, he stood in the darkness, waiting for a sign that the Dokkalfr followed and not entirely certain why he didn't go in after her. He tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword and, for a moment, contemplated defying orders and hunting her down himself.

“Bergen,” Rune said, settling into his bedroll. “Leave her.”

After waiting a while longer, Bergen abandoned his judgment to that of his brother's and sulked to bed, plagued by too many shadows to sleep.

“Daggon.”

Gudrun delivered a well-placed kick to the captain's legs. He didn't move. The surrounding forest, thick with fern and foliage, remained as black as it was quiet. Sunrise was still hours away. Even the last of the frogs had ended their croaking for the night.

Grumbling impatiently, she wadded up a blanket and threw it at his head.

“Daggon!”

Daggon groaned back and, muffling her racket with a bare arm, clamped his head beneath the blanket Gudrun had thrown at him.

“Daggon! Wake up!”

She kicked him again.

With a groan of protest, the captain rolled onto his back and plopped his arm to the ground. The firelight flickered, casting black shadows into the deep gouges that etched his face.

“She's here, Daggon!”

Daggon's eyes flew open. He was up in an instant as if the ground had suddenly burned him.

“Where is she?” he asked as he forced himself to stand on his sleep-logged feet.

“Here, in Alfheim,” she said. “We have to move or we won't make it!”

Still trying to re-establish his balance, Daggon collected the blankets and packed the bags, shaking away the dizziness left behind by too little sleep.

“How far?” he asked, looking up from his work as his hands kept busy. Gudrun didn't bother looking up from the blankets she rolled on the other side of the campfire.

“If we hurry, we'll be able to meet up with her. Three…” She paused in thought. “Four days, at most.”

The cinders hissed in protest as she poured a bucket of water over the campfire.

Daggon collected the rolled blankets and fastened them to the saddlebags at Thor's rear.

“Where is she now?” he asked, giving a final yank to the saddle as Gudrun collected the last of their bags from the ground.

“To the south,” she said. “A day's ride from Lorlenalin.”

Daggon snapped his head about.

“But Lorlenalin is seven day's ride from here.”

Gudrun stopped beside him, her arms loaded with the last of supplies.

“She isn't going to Lorlenalin, Daggon… She's going to Gunir.”

“Gunir?”

“If we hurry…” Gudrun moved to lend a hand to the saddle Daggon still held. “…we can find a way into the city. We'll need to find a way to get her out—”

“You're proposing we storm the Ljosalfar's main defense?” Daggon asked. “Alone?”

Gudrun kept her eyes on the saddle as she fastened her bags.

“You want us to find their most guarded prisoner and break her out?”

Gudrun huffed impatiently then peered up at Daggon.

“Are you mad,” he asked. “Or did you have one too many sips of your special brews while I was sleeping?”

“I'm going, Daggon,” Gudrun said, her eyes narrowed sleepily.

“Gudrun…” Daggon let out a series of sighs. “How by the All Father are you planning on doing this?”

The old woman shoved him aside, annoyed with his dallying as she continued to fasten his bags to the rear of the saddle herself.

“The walls of Gunir encompass the whole of the city!” Daggon pushed his face within inches from hers. Her stern stubbornness was apparent through the darkness. “We will not break through unseen,” Daggon said. “They'll have her guarded at their highest point, in their tallest tower!”

“Are you coming?” she asked, stopping for a moment to meet his gaze.

“Of course!” Daggon grinned, all too eager to get started. “What's the plan?”