The Seed – part 1
by KM Scott
To BC – Happy Birthday, and have many more!
The roan had been ridden hard for 15 leagues through night and dawn, then night again. White froth ran down from it's mouth as it's metal-shod hoofs punished the sod beneath, tearing at the distance between the rider and his destination at a speed that would never be fast enough.
The knight pushed his ride hard, but he dared not push it harder – Nadine was a friend and a lover of animals. To have been responsible for the thoughtless injury of her favorite horse would've left him regretful for the rest of his life, however long that turned out to be. He would not slow his pace, however – the precious cargo mounted behind him and secured with bindings under its dirty, dark blue covering couldn't bear to wait an hour longer.
As the lesser moon of the sky of Emiria settled into its final phase, Sir Gerald of Hillwood's desperate eyes finally found the elation they sought – a tiny cottage just on the rim of a line of mountains, a dim candle's light in a window winking at him. He cried out in joy as he spurred his ride toward the little house.
Stopping just along the edge of the porch, Sir Gerald threw himself off his saddle, suppressing a pained grunt. The dark crimson of his tunic could not hide the tell-tale bleeding along his left thigh, or any of the plethora of wounds he'd suffered, for that matter. With luck, the infection would merely be severe instead of life threatening, and he tended to be a very lucky man. He quickly limped to the front door, banged on it roughly, then retreated back to Nadine's horse, hastily untying the bunched-up cargo from her back.
He gently lifted the uncooperative burden into his arms and hobbled up to the door once more, raising his fist to give it another pounding, when it snapped open abruptly.
A woman stood tall and lean on the other side of it. Her pale-golden locks fell in splendid braids down the back of her flowing, pink gown. She blasted a look of surprised anger at her nighttime intruder from her radiant green eyes, her smooth, pink skin reddening at the impudence of whoever would call so late.
"What's the meaning of this?" she growled, nearing her visitor. "Pounding on my door in the middle of the night? How dare you ---!"
"Helga," Gerald interrupted, his voice both firm and pleading – and she stopped. The woman, Helga, narrowed her eyes, her angst draining away the moment she heard his voice.
"Gerald?" she said softly.
"Please," he responded, "I have to come in. You must see us tonight!"
Helga blinked in confusion. "Us? You and your horse?"
But Gerald had maneuvered past her and into the cottage. It was a small affair, really nothing more than a bedroom and dining area. What furniture there was sat unimpressive, but functional. Amongst the bigger settings was the dining table, which Gerald swept clear with one arm while holding the prized freight with the other, promptly putting it down on the cleared space when done.
"Hey!" Helga yelled. "I'll have you know I plan to eat breakfast on that tomorrow! What right do you think you have to barge in here and leave that filthy load on my table?!"
In answer, Gerald fumbled around one side of the covering, unfurling a stitching that kept two sides closely bound together. It fell open. Revealed underneath was a face – the face of an unconscious young man, no more than 20. He had yellow hair, the color of cornflower, which lay in a tangled mess around his head.
The head had a distinctive shape to it; one that even the kindest observer would have to admit was rather … almond-like. It did not, however, distract from a natural, unobtrusive handsomeness. If anything, a sense of almost endearing helplessness framed his face, aided in no small part by his ragged breathing.
Helga was stunned, her mouth opening and closing to give voice to a thousand emotions, not a single one of which were verbalized.
"…Arnold …" she whispered.
"He was bitten," Gerald weakly explained. Helga immediately moved to the insensate boy, ripping at the covering around him. "Get this off him," she ordered. Gerald complied, and soon the covering was off, but Helga was still working with the boy's shirt. Gerald reached to help her lift it off, but she tore it open with one effortless yank.
What they saw underneath made their blood run cold. The boy's chest was alive – moving, scurrying, and roiling as if there were a colony of spiders underneath the epidermis. Dark, black liquid moved slowly through visible veins, wormlike in its travel's through his body, grouping around the chest, the stomach, working its way up his neck. A dense concentration of the liquid seemed rooted at three large, bloody, pus-filled lesions along his ribcage.
Helga and the knight stared at this terror until Helga muttered something Gerald didn't hear. "What?" he asked.
She repeated it – but not for him. There was no way for him to understand it anyway, as it was a word from an archaic tongue. The incantation provided the intended effect, however, as the black liquid and its insect-like causatum on his skin contracted, sending the blond boy into convulsions. Here, Helga sprang back into action, ripping at the youth's breeches and tearing them away, doing the same to his under clothes and boots until he lay completely naked on the table.
Gerald was aghast, and would have said something had Helga not suddenly shoved him out of the way. His shock at the girl's actions gave way to understanding the instant he saw the rest of the body – his feet, calves, and thighs – almost the entire lower half of his body – were turning a deep purple-gray, a familiar infection that Gerald shuddered at.
Helga ran out of the room for what seemed like a few seconds, and darted back in carrying a corked gourd. She pulled the cork and hummed more incantations as she upended the gourd, pouring fine, yellow dust over the boy's stricken form.
"What are you going ----" Helga did not stop her chanting, but smoothly thrust her hand at Gerald in a command of silence. Her voice, ringing as if in song, became lower and lower, as she slowly stood on the table and straddled the boy. Then she fell silent. She took out a knife, held it against the palm of her right hand.
At Gerald's gasp, she cast a glance at him over her shoulder. "From now on, total silence." There was no arguing with the emphasis she put on the last two words. Gerald stumbled backward into a nearby chair, intent on obeying.
Without the slightest change in her stoic expression, Helga drew the blade across her palm, slicing open the skin, crimson gushing out of the cut. She brought her hand down on the boy's chest, her blood mixing with the dust in a dark, pink paste. She drew her hand over his ribs, his stomach, arms, legs, all over his nakedness, squeezing her wrist and the sides of her slashed hand to continue the blood flow. She paused, whispering another spell, then cautiously sank first her fingers, then her entire right hand into one of the gaping bite-marks on the rib cage.
She sighed deeply – a sigh that turned into a long hiss, which seemed to Gerald to last a lot longer than one would expect a human to be able to sustain. The hiss became louder and louder, almost a piercing noise which seemed to shake the whole house. The single candle in the room quivered and blew out, the floorboards and rafters groaned. Gerald smashed his palms against his ears as Helga became incandescent in the darkness, an empyrean luminescence shining down on her from an unseen source above, and she lit up, became bodily radiant, almost translucent as the light shone down onto her, into her, through her.
There was another sound, almost as loud as the hissing, a hideous and indescribable sound of some sepulchral miscreation being torn, shredded, mangled into bloody pieces, roaring its defiance. The boy's mouth was open and the sound blasted without, but it was not a human that was making this plaintive noise. Suddenly, the light burst from Helga's body into Arnold's, and the supernormal groan became explosively loud. Gerald folded himself onto the floor, ignoring the pain of his wounds, as he tried to stop the nightmare from dancing in his ears.
And then … silence.
A dim light played across Gerald's eyes, snapped shut to bar the chaos. He opened them to see Helga's angelic face, holding the re-lit candle in her left hand. She held out her right to help him up.
There was no sign of the cut.
"Up, brave Sir Tall Hair," she smiled gently.
A slow grin crept across Gerald's face at the mention of his tribal name, a spiritual appellation given to him at birth by an honored shaman, in a ritual considered noble and venerable for centuries. Only Helga could make it sound like an insult.
The sorceress helped him to his knees, and then wrapped her arm around his shoulder, steadying him to his feet. "How is he?" he asked, as Helga steered him back to his chair.
"He'll be fine," she said. Gerald placed his hands on her shoulders, stopping her. "Helga … thank you. I'm … I'm sorry for having brought him here. I had no choice. I know that you had ---"
"Gerald," she said, and fully embraced him. He threw his arms around her back and held her. It had been far too long between these two friends.
Helga purposefully pulled out of the hug and sat Gerald down. "Stay," she ordered, and lit out of the room again, her loose-fitting gown doing a poor job of hiding her firm, curvaceous body. Not half the tomboy beanstalk she was as a child, Gerald mused.
Helga returned shortly with a cache of bottles, sponges and rags, as well as a small stool. Placing her items near Gerald's chair, she pulled out a thick blanket from under her arm, and gingerly placed it over the Arnold's naked body. She then seated herself on the stool, pulled nearer to Gerald, and began working among the potions and powders.
"Off with your stuff. Armor, boots, tunic and undershirt," she said, as she mixed a particularly potent remedy. "And not one complaint about the smell."
Gerald looked perplexed. "What about him?" he asked, with a nod toward Arnold, but still fumbling with his belt and outer garments.
"The hydra's dying," she explained. "The cursed infection coursing through his body. The … Light, let's call it, mortally wounded it. It is a matter of surgery to take it out."
"Why not take it out now?" Gerald, down to his undershirt and breeches, allowed her to lift his shirt and begin to apply the poultice she mixed to his wounds.
"Dying and dead are two different things, Gerald. You ever see a dark hydra? Looks like a jellyfish, tentacles and all. It has latched itself onto his vitals. If I take it out now, I take his innards out as well.
"So," she sighed as she applied more of the curative over the slashes on his muscled chest and lean stomach, "what happened?"
Gerald did not look at her when he spoke. "Balmoral has fallen. The Seed took it. Lord Cyrus is dead."
The slender fingers on Gerald's chest stopped cold. The acerbic wit had abandoned the sorceress, and Helga stared into his emotionless face.
Finally, she said, "When did this happen?"
"Yesterday morning," Gerald intoned.
"You've been riding since yesterday morning?!"
"I didn't know where else to go. Cyrus ordered the city evacuated when the swarm was first sighted. He separated me from my men and told me to find Arnold and get him as far away from Balmoral as possible. When I got to his shop, they were already there, surrounding him."
Her eyes questioned him and Gerald confirmed. "Irg-wraiths. A murder of them. The whole place was all metal teeth and wings and shrieks. I tried to get him out of there, but they bit him before I could kill them all."
Helga continued with the poultice. "It's a wonder he made it this far."
"There was a curate at a temple I stopped at," Gerald continued. "He said some magic words; I guess that's what kept him from succumbing up till now."
"Some magic words, huh?"
He shrugged. "Worlds away from me, witch woman. Anyhow, he said specifically I should bring Arnold here. It killed me to do it … but, he's my friend."
"As am I," she stood up to rub the mixture into the gashes on his shoulders, and around his forehead. "You needn't apologize, Gerald. Despite what experience dictates, I'm actually glad to see you."
Gerald chuckled. It sounded strange to him – it'd been the first time in two weeks that he'd laughed at anything.
The first rumors of the inscrutable creatures of dark magic filtered down into the cities via drunken farmhands and traders, known to be susceptible to even the most incredible legends and stories. The Hill folk were like that. Their religion, medical practices – every aspect of their culture, in fact, was rooted in tall tales and myths. So when they first started chattering about the recently interred dead suddenly jumping up and crowding around the larger villages, their stories were seen as no more than the rambling of yokels. The excited terror in their eyes when they described black clouds of unearthly, winged monsters of all shapes and sizes – the irg-wraiths - bursting forth from the cadaver's rotted trunks served only to make such fiction all the more laughable.
It was barely a year ago when the king sent an expeditionary force to find out why so few traders had come down from the hills in recent months. When that expedition and two others failed to return, Gerald was summoned, along with a company of honored soldiers, to protect the fourth collection of physicians, holy men and scholars sent to investigate the disappearances.
What greeted their eyes was unholy. Villages large and small, deathly silent. Burst and rotting corpses were the only remnants of a populace estimated to be well over 3000 people.
That was but the first - the first they knew of. But more stories would come. Scores of relentless walking dead herding around a populated area, only to erupt, a host of relentless, steel-toothed creatures issuing forth from the ruptured carcass. It was if the bodies served as a vehicle (and possibly a breeding ground, it had been theorized) for the flesh-tearing nightmare seething inside of them.
This terror, it would be revealed, had a name, and even a face. He was called The Seed, and his accursed progeny shared it. What manner of man he was was unknown – whether he was man or malignant spirit was an issue of debate. But it was his cold touch that would instill within a body, living or dead, the hydra.
It was a slimy, black thing that undulated under the skin, taking hold of the organs of the victim. It gained in strength as time passed, gradually killing the mind, taking control of the body itself. From here, it was assumed, the creatures would either grow from the inside, or flock to the body, using it for transport.
It was something Gerald had seen too often now. With great cunning and inscrutable intent, The Seed had spread his monstrous army over two thirds of the kingdom. Great cities were falling one after the other in the space of weeks. The creatures were vulnerable, but formidable, and their numbers were impossible to match. The king's greatest generals, battle-hardened warriors, had made known their fears of the extinction of man to this dread scourge.
Helga began applying bandages to the mixture on the wounds. "Don't touch these, no matter how much they itch. Why did they want Arnold anyway?"
Gerald reached over to his weapons bundle and produced a long, lumpy length of metal. It had been hammered repeatedly in a rough and uneven fashion. If someone had been trying to forge it into something, then the shape of the thing could kindly be called vague, though there was a kind of curving on either side of the piece at one end. Helga shook her head in confusion.
"It's a sword," Gerald said evenly.
"What? That thing?"
Gerald, who was well trained in fencing, halfheartedly tried to hold it in proper defensive fashion. Twice he nearly dropped it due to its uneven weight. "There is something passing as a prophecy that says that a sword forged by the Chosen One will bring about the end of The Seed." He pursed his lips as the weapon-in-progress thudded pathetically to the floor.
"What prophecy?" Helga clucked as she reached down to pick up the unwieldy weapon. "I've never heard of any prophecy like that. I mean, the Seed is new, isn't it?"
The knight shook his tired head. "Not according to the Lumasi."
Helga's face fell into a look of disbelief. "No. No no. You cannot be serious. The Lumasi? That ancient, decrepit, discredited pack of frauds?! Arnold is in with them?"
He shook his head. "I don't know anything about that –"
"Stars, I thought he was smarter than that!" she blared as she glanced balefully at the sleeping blonde. "I mean, seriously, I don't know of a single town where they practiced their fakery that didn't run them out with pitchforks! And you're telling me Arnold, that silly, naïve boy, got involved through all this with them? Why did I just heal him? He's too stupid to live!"
"All I know," Gerald added volume to gain control of the conversation, "Is that the Lumasi fellow I talked to – the curate at the temple, that fellow - said that there was some ancient prophecy that told of something like the Seed coming to ---"
" 'Something like the Seed', Tall Hair?"
"Something like the Seed, yes, would cast a shadow over the kingdom. Some boy – the Chosen One, over there – would one day forge the sword that would destroy it. Or … him, the cur that leads the beasts." He adjusted himself in his chair, taking the weight off his wounded leg. "Now, I don't believe this anymore than you do. But when I went to get Arnold, the monsters were trying to attack him. He was their focus. If it wasn't for …" he waved his hand at the metallic lump, " … this, then I don't know why.
"I just needed to get him somewhere where he could heal."
Helga said nothing for a long time, just pinched the bridge of her nose, occasionally looking at Arnold, his chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm. Gerald sat up.
"Is he going to be alright?" he asked as he began to strap his belt around his tunic.
"With rest and proper food, yes. What are you doing?" She eyed him as he thrust his feet back into his boots.
"Getting dressed," he said with a shrug. "My dearest thanks, for everything. I'd stay longer, but I really have to get back on the road."
She pointed at the blood on his tunic. "On that leg? Are you crazy?"
Gerald gently fitted the rest of his armor over his dressed wounds. "It's a half day's ride to the next town from here. I don't know how close the Seed may be, but I'd have an easier time fighting them if I had a proper militia with me. I figure if I stay on the road for a little while and cut through some of the hills, I may make Redstump in the morning. The magistrate there is a friend of the king. He'll doubtless assemble a company of men to ride with me out to Benomir where I canYAAAAAAAAGH!!!!"
He crumpled as his clutched his leg. "That was just your inner thigh," said Helga, as she lowered her knee. "You want to ride a horse with that?"
"Blast it, woman, what's the matter with you?!" His voice, both strong and weak, rang off the walls. "You can't just up and give a knee to a man's place just to ---"
"Quiet," said Helga. It was neither request nor command. Gerald's eyelids sagged almost immediately. He dropped what clothing he'd not finished donning to the ground. Helga moved to him, gently pushing him, her hand at the small of his back, to her bedroom. With a gesture, she got him to lie down as she again removed his armor, boots, and tunic.
"Sleep," she said. Gerald obediently laid back, closed his eyes, and was asleep. Helga leaned forward, gently kissing his forehead as she walked out, closing the door behind her. She gazed at Arnold on the table before her, weak, helpless, in need.
Stars help her; this was going to be hard.