Chapter Twenty-Six Guthnyr
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Guthnyr
They found Sehlumvek burning. A city of stone walls and mostly wooden houses, Guthnyr gauged its size as roughly equal to the port of Speltsaer, although it was difficult to tell through the smoke.
Mounted on a dozen captured horses, he had led a scouting party ahead of his menda when Deyna advised they were within five miles of the city.
Even before he saw the twisting black columns rising above the craggy hills to the south, they began to encounter people on the road.
Most fled at the sight of a party of mounted warriors, but some simply stood and awaited their approach.
Drawing closer, Guthnyr made out soot-stained faces drawn in exhaustion.
Many of these people had nothing but the clothes they wore, so handing out food and water earned trust and loosened tongues enough to gain a picture of what had happened in their city.
“Slaves rose up, didn’t they?” one woman said.
Clad in a scorched woollen dress and clutching a squalling infant to her breast, she related her tale in between unsuccessful attempts to calm the child.
“No one to stop ’em was there? What with the Tuhlvyr fecked off with all the warriors.
” She paused, sniffing and surveying Guthnyr and his party with a suddenly wary eye.
“Guessin’ you’re who he went to fight, then? ”
“A correct guess,” Deyna told her. “He lost.”
“’Course he fecking did,” the woman muttered, her gaze slipping to Guthnyr. “S’pose that makes you the new Tuhlvyr.”
“No,” Guthnyr said, nodding to Deyna. “That would be her. Return to your home,” he added, kicking his heels to set his horse into motion. “It will be made safe by the morrow.”
When confronted with the chaos of Sehlumvek, however, he wondered if his comforting promise had made him a liar.
Unlike those encountered so far, most of the townsfolk appeared to be in the process of fleeing south rather than north.
A disorganised trail of escapees lined the road leading away from the south-facing gate.
So numerous were they that Guthnyr wondered if the entire place might be empty before he reached it.
Fires raged in several places, mostly close to the walls.
Given the height of the flames visible through the thickening smoke, he judged the different blazes would soon merge.
The resultant inferno meant a city reduced to ashes by the next morning, rendering it useless to his cause.
“Sygurn,” he said. “Ride to Torfyn and tell him to bring the menda on as fast as he can. And have them be prepared to fight these fires.”
Once the blacksmith had galloped off, Guthnyr led the rest of the party towards the city gate.
Its great doors stood open and unguarded with corpses littering the thoroughfare beyond.
A few wore warrior’s garb, but the others were clad in the more threadbare smocks typically worn by Nihlvarian slaves.
From the frequency of their wounds and the way the bodies were often piled atop one another, he judged this to have been a frenzied struggle.
“Might be best to let this place burn, Blue-face,” Halvor commented, blinking eyes moistened by the drifting smoke.
He had attached himself to the scouting party without being asked.
Although still irritated by Torfyn’s son, Guthnyr didn’t object.
Halvor had proven himself a decent hand in the fighting at the river and was a better rider than most in the Tielvik’s menda.
“Wars aren’t won by letting your supplies go up in smoke,” Guthnyr returned.
He attempted to spur his horse forward but the animal tossed its head, emitting a loud whinny of protest. Muttering a curse, he dismounted, telling the others to do the same.
They proceeded along the city’s main thoroughfare in a run, leaping more corpses and glimpsing the occasional, ghostly figure fleeing through the billowing pall.
Hearing a cacophony of shouts, Guthnyr slowed his pace, squinting to make out a broad space ahead.
The increasingly voluble shouting held a discordant chant, the voices of many raised in answer to a question: “And this one? Should we spare her?”
“No!” came the answering cry. “No! No! No!”
The smoke thinned as Guthnyr emerged from the street, looking around at what he guessed to be the main market square.
A large number of people were clustered in groups, all clad in slave garb.
They formed a loose semicircle around the base of the steps leading to what he took to be the Tuhlvyr’s hall.
Several other slaves stood upon tiered stone streaked with red, each holding an axe.
Scattered about their feet were a score of heads and recently decapitated corpses.
On the lower steps a stocky axe wielder stood over the kneeling figure of a girl no more than fourteen summers.
The excited shouting from moments before dwindled at the sight of Guthnyr’s party, a hushed silence settling over the scene as he strode into the square.
“Leave her be,” he instructed the stocky man, drawing Kohrvayl for emphasis.
He expected defiance but the axe wielder stared at him in apparent fascination. “The blue-faced Tielvik,” he breathed. “You’re truly real.”
“I truly am,” Guthnyr agreed. Beckoning to the weeping girl at the axe wielder’s feet, he said, “Come here. You won’t be harmed.”
“She’s ours,” another axe bearer said, stepping into Guthnyr’s path.
He was tall but thin, a deep scar running from the centre of his brow to his chin, mangling his lips so that every word he spoke was accompanied by spittle.
“All the kin of the Tuhlvyr and the Aerlings are ours. That little bitch.” He stabbed a finger at the kneeling girl.
“Cheered and laughed when my brother died fighting in the wuhltra. I watched her, giggling away at her father’s side like it was a fecking puppet show. ”
“I’m sorry for your brother,” Guthnyr told him.
“But I don’t murder children.” He raised Kohrvayl, angling the blade so as to conjure its uncanny knack of catching even the most meagre light.
“I it was who defeated Tuhlvyr Telmyrk. His menda lies slain and stripped miles to the north, while mine is bare minutes from this city. We came here to break your chains, not fight you. But will if need be. Now stand aside or face me.”
Guthnyr saw fear penetrate the scarred man’s vengeful fury, though he continued to hesitate until the stocky man spoke.
“Leave it, Peltar,” he said, releasing the girl and stepping aside, axe lowered.
His would-be victim immediately fled, some instinct for recognising a fellow noble leading her to Deyna’s side.
Sobbing, she crouched protectively at her back, clutching at her robe.
From the annoyance on Deyna’s face, Guthnyr expected her to shove the girl away.
Instead, she quickly summoned a frown of concern and patted her head.
“There, there,” she said, coughing to banish the awkward tone before speaking more gently. “Have no fear. You’re safe now, little one.”
The thin man lingered in Guthnyr’s path a second longer, bisected features twitching in angry reluctance until he stepped aside. However, he proved unable to still his tongue. “You won a battle, Blue-face, but we won this city. Don’t forget that.”
“Watch your fecking tongue, ingrate!” Halvor snapped, levelling his sword at Peltar. “Slaughtering a handful of outnumbered gate guards and hacking off a few heads earns you no regard in my eyes. If not for us you’d still be suffering the whip, and you know it.”
“I said we’re not here to fight!” Guthnyr said, stepping between the two men as they hunched in readiness of combat.
Turning, he raised his voice, casting it to the watching crowd of former slaves.
“You may know me as the blue-faced Tielvik who leads a menda in revolt against the Vortigurn. This I am, but I was also once as you are. I also knew the sting of the whip and the shame of chains. But I have learned that freedom is not won by making yourself the vile mirror of our enemy. We must be better, else what do we fight for?”
He let the words settle over them, seeing mostly grim, begrimed faces. Many bore the bruises and scars of recent fighting and he knew that this group did not comprise every slave in Sehlumvek, only those who fought. Therefore, they were far too valuable to risk alienating with ill-tempered words.
“Join with me!” Guthnyr said, lowering his sword and approaching the crowd with his hand outstretched.
“Only in unity can we prevail. Without it we become little more than rival bands of beggared outlaws haunting the wilderness until the Vortigurn sends his dogs to hunt us down. I will compel no one to march under my banner, but if you stay and pledge yourself to this cause, your first act will be to save this city from destruction.”
He didn’t wait for an answer, instead sheathing Kohrvayl and striding away. “Seek out the wells,” he told his scouts. “And gather up as many buckets as you can.”
“The one thing I never thought you to be,” Deyna murmured, scraping a thumb through the mingled soot and sweat covering Guthnyr’s cheek, “was a speech maker.” She laughed and planted a kiss on his chin before returning to the large desk in the centre of the room.
Naturally, he had found her ensconced in the grandest chambers in the Tuhlvyr’s hall, seated at a desk piled high with disordered stacks of documents and ledger books.
The girl they had rescued from the slave mob sat in the corner, pale of face but with bright, fearful eyes that said much for both her fortitude and intelligence.
The horror of her family’s fate hadn’t unseated her mind and she was right to be scared, despite the Tielvik general’s protection.