by Melion Traverse
in Issue 112, May 2021
I see your eyes glimmering as you watch my ring spark in the firelight. Ah, yes, you are wondering how one so shabby as I should wear such a precious thing. I can tell you that the man who gave it to me considered it a mere bauble, nothing more. He fairly tossed it towards me as I just tossed those scraps to my hound. Except, of course, I care more for my hound.
A story? Oh, yes, of course there’s a story. What manner of skald would I be if I didn’t drip stories the way our queen drips diamonds, splashing the room with their glittering light?
In truth, it was a king who gave me this ring. No, not our king. Nobody quite so lofty as that; it was long ago, too, when I felt the cold like a fresh wind in my lungs rather than an ache in my bones.
You wish to hear this story of how a wandering skald met a king? Hmm, well, the night is yet young, the fire quite warm, and if you will kindly refill my cup with that red wine, I suppose I could find the energy to oblige you.
No, no, it doesn’t begin “once upon a time” for it is not that sort of story. It’s a sad enough story, I suppose, so you may wish to fill your cup, as well.
The story begins when I was but a wandering harper. My master had taught me the trade and I could sing the old songs and play with beauty to make a mountain weep, but I didn’t yet have songs of my own. That is part of our trade, you see. A person can’t become a proper skald until they have crafted their own song, and that’s no easy matter. My old master had wandered sea to mountain and back again in his youth to find a story that he could spin as his own, and the day came that I must also set out to do the same.
As I said, I hadn’t yet found a song, since I had only yet begun my travels. Oh, I had trudged many a dusty road and slogged many more choked knee-deep in mud, but I had not yet pressed as far as a skald must journey for knowledge profoundly hidden. Of course, I thought I had because I had crossed beyond the Skyward Peaks and put behind me the gods only know how many tiny kingdoms.
Then came the storm.
I had never seen such a driving wall of snow nor felt the ice chew down so far into my blood, and it would be many a year before I would experience the like again. The snow turned the world into a froth of white, and I recall stumbling about with less wits than a newborn fawn. I wasn’t from those regions, and when the storm swept upon me, I hadn’t known the warning signs. Like as not, I would have staggered in circles until Lord Death plucked me from this world with the frigid iron of his scythe had I not blundered straight into the side of a building.
Found the wall with my face and about knocked what few wits remained to me clean from my head. I thudded down into the snow with my nose drizzling blood and my teeth clattering. Aye, you might laugh now, but I thought in those moments that I was looking upon my end. Then the wind whipped a voice towards me, and next thing I knew, hands were grabbing under my arms and dragging me to my feet.
My brave rescuer hauled me inside and straight to a fire much like the one we’re at right now. When the ice melted from my brows and my eyes could properly open, I looked about to see I was in a house. Not much of a house, but to my weary mind, it was a paradise to rival the realm of the gods. A woman and her man, four children, who seemed to be all eyes and hair like wind-tossed willow trees, watched me as I shivered back into some semblance of life. But it was another woman, one who sat just apart from the others, claiming the visitor’s place by the fire, who most caught my notice. From the snow still melting in her hair, I guessed she had been my savior. She certainly looked to have the nerve to stride out into a wailing snow storm, what with a scabbarded sword across her lap and a gaze like a hunting falcon in her eyes.
“Thank you for saving me,” I said to the lady, for I had traipsed at my master’s heels in the noble halls enough to know she was not from my base-born world, and she nodded. The woman of the house brought me herbs steeped in gloriously warm water, and I gulped it down so fast I couldn’t speak to its taste.
“What brings you out traveling in such weather?” the lady asked, and I caught just the ghost of judgement in her tone.
“I’m a journeying harper,” I replied, and then ruefully added, “It seems I know more about the nature of men and of music than I do about the ways of weather.”
“A skald?” she said, and from the smile she didn’t quite hide, I knew how I would be able to repay her for her aid and the family for their hospitality.
“I haven’t any songs of my own yet,” I said, recovering my harp from the security of its bag and hoping she had missed the unintended shame in my tone, “but I know one or two which are still new enough to the courts.”
Considering my disheveled state, it was not my finest performance, but the children crowded at my feet and their parents both smiled as though my telling of the “Lai of Sir Ulfric” was a gift beyond measure. The lady, however, watched with an expression that reminded me of a person appraising a hound pup to test its promise.
As the last note drifted away to blend with the howl of the wind, she simply said to me, “Well played, skald. You know your trade well.”
In my exhaustion, I remember smiling, but I don’t recall if I thanked her for the praise before I collapsed into a ball of sleep and wild dreams.
I do remember that I wasn’t thanking her the next morning when she nudged me awake none-too-gently with her boot.
“Time to be leaving, skald,” she said in a low voice that told me the family still slept. The wind had ceased howling, but I still shivered beneath my blankets.
“Leaving?” I mumbled, clutching the blankets closer.
“I have places to be, and I suppose I’ll be taking you along with me.” She pulled the blanket edges from my hands and motioned towards the door. “I might have need of a skald on my adventures, and perhaps you’ll be rewarded with a story.”
I recollect muttering something that would not make the gods smile, and she snatched away the blanket so that all the cold spilled past my skin.
“Come now, that’s no way to respond to a knight’s request,” she said, but I caught the hint of a smile. A knight who could smile at a harper’s casual blasphemy might be a knight worth following.
“I’m not a proper skald,” I said once we had slipped out the door and into a world crisp with fresh snow. “My name is Velkin.”
“That’s an odd name,” she said in a tone that had enough contemplation to take away the sting of any insult. “But I’m an odd knight, so I suppose I can’t judge.”
“It’s a common enough name where I come from,” I said and jerked my head in the direction of some vague place beyond the Skyward Peaks.
“Very well, Velkin the future skald,” she replied with a grin. “I’m Sir Ava. Wait here while I fetch my horse.”
“Sir? Not lady?” I inquired, not waiting but instead edging into the little barn at her heels.
“That’s correct.” She approached a dun-colored charger and rubbed his nose in greeting before she began saddling the snorting creature. “I’m a consecrated knight of the Church of Avgorath. We usually take the title ‘sir’ upon being raised to our rank as a matter of tradition.”
It seemed to me that I’d heard of such a tradition before, but I was no follower of Avgorath—his world had little space for the gentle skills of skalds—and few women fought as knights in his ranks, so I had not yet encountered any, either in life or in stories.
“What would a knight of the Church need with a skald?” I asked.
“Perhaps songs may travel where knights may not,” Sir Ava answered.
It is the nature of skalds to be inquisitive, and I found myself unable to hold back the wave of questions sloshing in my mind. As I crunched through the fresh snow at Sir Ava’s side, I pressed onward. After all, here was I with my very own knight, and what else should I do but delve into the workings of the one who would have me sing her tale?
“Where would you need a song to travel, milady?” I asked.
“There’s no ‘milady’ about me, and I abandoned that path long ago,” she said, a slight bitterness to her smile. “You have asked that I call you Velkin, and I have asked that you call me Sir Ava. Have we agreed on that?” I nodded and pressed again with questions, but all I received in answer was a sad smile that reminded me of the fading traces of sunset on the last day of summer.
“You have no squire?” I asked again out of curiosity. Once or twice I had met knights without an apprentice shadowing their heels, but it was rare.
“Not at the moment. Though you can have the job for a while, if you want it so badly.” I couldn’t quite catch the tone in her words, but her expression seemed serious.
“I wouldn’t be much of a squire,” I said lightly. “I wouldn’t have the first idea what to do with that hooved mountain you’ve got.” The horse snorted as though he understood. That was more response than I received from Sir Ava, but a harper without questions is a harper who will never find a song.
“May I trouble you to ask whither we might wander?” I asked as I adjusted the leather bag that carried my harp.
“Not terribly far,” she responded. “There’s a beast that’s been glutting itself upon travelers beyond those hills, and it’s my quest to kill it. Two days at the most and we shall be there. Luckily for us this storm let up during the night.”
Yes, luck indeed, I thought without a sense of luck in my mind. However I’d expected to find my story, I hadn’t anticipated inviting myself into a monster’s lair to become its supper. But I chanced a look at Sir Ava as she pushed relentlessly through the snow as though nature itself couldn’t find an impediment beyond her power. A scar traced along her cheek and I suspected that her armor hid even more. Well, she was a warrior who’d survived other battles, and I decided that any beast bold enough to attack her would meet its match. She was no mere traveler. My task would be to stand back and take good notes so that I could enshrine the best parts in a proper song.
“What’s this beast like?” I asked, and realized I might have used too jaunty a tone because she favored me with a sharp look.
“Nobody knows,” she said. “All who’ve seen it have perished. Whatever it is, it leaves behind only skeletal husks as though all the muscle and innards have shriveled away. Just bones covered in skin like leather.”
I won’t lie and pretend I didn’t shudder. My mind had conjured a beast with slavering jaws and glowing eyes. I had expected something terrible but real. What was I to make of this thing that had no image to put in my mind?
“And you’re going to face it?” It was a foolish question, but it tumbled from my mouth before I could think.
“If it pleases my god, yes.” Another would have sneered at my idiocy, but to her credit, Sir Ava kept her expression steady. “It’s my place to stand between the innocent and the dangers that would destroy them.”
“That’s truly a knightly sentiment,” I said and didn’t realize irony had crept in until she laughed.
“You certainly have a gift for saying the first thing that comes to your mind,” she responded. “I thought skalds were supposed to be more circumspect in their words.”
Despite the chill breeze, my cheeks flushed hot. “As I said, I’m not yet a skald. There’s much that I must still learn, and I suppose only part of that learning is finding my own song.”
“Well, don’t learn too much, Velkin, the future skald. The world could use those who say the unvarnished truth.” She slapped me on the back so that my teeth rattled, but I couldn’t quite hide a pleased smile.
The weather in those regions was capricious as a spring goat, and the world had warmed enough that in two days’ time the pristine snow had turned to sludge that ran in muddy rivulets. I noticed that despite having a great big horse that could carry her above the cold, wet muck, Sir Ava had not once ridden the animal since I had joined her. I almost said something—though the gods only know what I was about to say since I can’t imagine it would have been insightful—when I took notice of the way her hand fidgeted on the pommel of her sword. A twitch of the fingers as her hand rested on the weapon, nothing more, but my training had taught me such movement betrayed many things.
Almost as though she had caught me observing her, Sir Ava said, “We’re nearing the beast’s hunting grounds. Have courage, Velkin, and if you’re one for praying, now might be a good time to do so.”
“You aren’t going to say something about the gods granting you glorious victory?” I asked.
“I’ll leave that for you to include when you tell my story—that’s what you’re skilled at, anyhow.” She gave me a quick smile that brought an unexpected flush of pride to my face.
It was not much afterward that we found the first sign that the beast had hunted. A skeleton sprawled across the muddy path that served as our road, and I couldn’t help but glance into the sky as though following the path of its sockets staring into eternity. I’d seen skeletons and bodies, of course, being that my master had been a battle skald and I had learned no small part of my trade at his elbow with a landscape of bloody carnage laying before us. But this. This was different.
This wasn’t even a proper skeleton since it still had flesh upon the bones. The bones seemed to suck the skin to their form so that every angle jutted against the desiccated flesh. Lips pulled back into an eternal snarl showed a mouth filled with crooked teeth. Worse yet, the remains seemed undisturbed by the melting snow; that poor fool had not lain there through the storm.
“If nobody has lived to describe the beast, how did you know about these?” I asked in a voice like a hissing of wind.
“Because a detachment of soldiers brought one back,” she said, not lowering her voice as she swept her gaze over the snow-muddied land.
“And these brave soldiers didn’t try to fight this monster?”
“Don’t be bitter about things you don’t understand,” she returned. “They were ready to meet this creature, but it did not appear. It seems that it likes to hunt more vulnerable prey.”
I nearly made a comment which sounded smarter in my head than it would in my mouth about her not looking vulnerable with her sword and armor when my eyes settled upon a broken piece of metal. So, the skeleton had also once had a sword, too.
“Do you know how to ride?”
Sir Ava’s voice drew me from the fear into which I was sinking.
“Yes, mila—Sir Ava,” I said.
“Good. Should it come down to it, get on Bayard and ride like Hell’s teeth are snapping your heels. Your job is to weave stories, not slay beasts. Understand?”
I nodded with shameful promptness. She had her sword drawn and ready in an almost casual way, as though she awaited the signal for a duel.
“You once asked me why I don’t have a squire. Hand me my shield, won’t you, Velkin?” She grinned, and I thought I had never seen a smile have such a burst of sadness. I did as commanded, but as I reached her shield, I realized that it was draped with thick cloth. Since most of our travels had been us walking side-by-side as Sir Ava led her horse, I hadn’t much occasion to notice the shield.
Now I lifted away the cloth and caught my breath. On the shield was the mark of her god—a sword pointed downward as though a vengeful deity were plunging it into a wicked earth—but over the sword crossed a thick, black line. The mark of a disgraced knight.
“I—I—forgive me,” I stammered as if I had pulled away blankets to stare upon a naked form.
“What should I forgive?” she asked. “Bring me the shield.”
Of course I did as bidden, but as I helped adjust it on her arm, I set eyes on her face. If she saw my pity, she spared us both the pain of embarrassment and spoke in the way of a farmer talking about the summer harvest.
“Your song, Velkin the future skald, is going to erase that mark,” she said at last. “You will go before my father, King Matthias, and you will tell him that I have washed away my disgrace with my own blood.”
The king. Her father was the king.
I shook my head. “No, you’ll tell him when this is done. You’ll stand before him and tell how you killed the beast.”
“Even if I survive, I cannot go before my father. I traded away my name and my inheritance. I became a knight rather than a princess. He thinks I’ve found a different father to obey and a different kingdom to inherit.” Sir Ava paused before adding in a thoughtful tone, “Perhaps he’s not wrong, either.”
“And that is why you have the mark of disgrace upon your shield?” I asked, not bothering to hide the distaste in my words.
“Betrayal is betrayal, Velkin, even if I betrayed a parent for a god, I have still betrayed my father. This mark has been carried for less.”
I shuffled about and this brought Sir Ava back to the present with a bark of laughter. “Look at me, getting sentimental at the worst time,” she said, and I had the sense that, for a moment, I no longer existed. “What good am I as a knight if I cannot keep my mind set upon Avgorath’s work?”
Even I had the sagacity to hold my tongue after that. Instead, I stood clutching the warhorse’s reins as though my unskilled hands could control such a creature should he go wild when the beast set upon us. Still, there is something to be said about feeling useful as a battle closes around you, and I needed that usefulness since it occurred to me that all my talent with words and song meant less than a mouthful of spit once blood started flowing. Beautiful imagery and heroic meter wouldn’t have mattered one bit to the gaunt skeleton practically at my feet when his sword failed. My moment was not to come in battle, you see. Such has never been my nature.
The beast came to feed at dusk. Wriggling and bloated, it burst from the earth like a great, fetid worm that reeked of stale blood. Dirt and snow blasted into the sky as the monster erupted from the ground almost beneath our feet. Bayard leaped and pulled me off balance, hauling me through mud and snow as the thing heaved itself onto the ground. I cursed the horse in the worst oaths I knew, but had he not bolted, I would have been devoured then and there. The shuddering earth tossed Sir Ava down, but she rolled with practiced skill and jumped to her feet, sword and shield ready.
My heart plunged into my guts like a stooping hawk as I stared at the scene. The worm’s flesh undulated as it raised itself, and I saw that it had a human face. Grotesque, twisted, formed as though by a sculptor who knew a person’s face by touch rather than sight, it still leered with human lips and darted human eyes over its prey.
“Prorse Celestia!” Sir Ava shouted and she rattled her sword against the edge of her shield. “Come on, foul beast, and see the power of Avgorath!”
The beast didn’t move, but a tongue like a crimson rope shot from its mouth. Sir Ava dodged as it flicked past.
“Sah, sah you are fassst,” the beast hissed and the stench of rotting gore deepened. “Mmm, but your blood runs hot.”
Another flick of movement, and Sir Ava’s sword flashed in the dying sunlight. The beast screamed and its tongue writhed in serpentine agony in the snow. The knight drove forward, shield raised. I could have cheered as though at a tournament as she plunged her sword into the putrid flesh. Oozing blood spat from the wound and hissed with steam as it splattered over the snow. The gruesome head swung around and darted toward Sir Ava. Up went her shield just as the face slammed against her. Again and again it battered against her as though driven by wound-fury. She met each strike with body braced and face grim. Against such a fighter no beast could prevail!
Then, with a speed I couldn’t fathom, the beast heaved its bulk aside and twisted away from the knight. Spines erupted from along its body and two fleshy arms sprouted below its head. It feinted an attack with its head. Sir Ava smashed the shield forward but a set of blood-dripping claws caught her along the flank. Warrior that she was, she growled in anger but didn’t scream against the raking pain. Another slash from her sword cut away a clawed hand.
“The face!” I shouted, pointing uselessly. Bereft of an arm, the monster had sprouted fangs to rival a pair of swords.
Claws grasped the knight’s shield, wrenched it aside with such power that I heard a terrible snap that I knew wasn’t wood. Sir Ava swung to parry the fangs, slashing a bloody kerf across the leering face. Shield hanging from a limp arm, the knight parried and counter attacked, turning claws and fangs as she sought the opportunity to strike. But the monster moved with sudden, unpredictable speed so that its attacks seemed to be everywhere and nowhere all at once as it slammed its spiny body against Sir Ava. The battle churned the ground to a slick of bloodied mud, and more than once the knight’s balance faltered.
Gods help me, but I had to do something. Never mind that I was nothing more than a journeying harper. Never mind that I hadn’t a drop of fight in my body. I couldn’t let this thing suck the life from the knight whose story I promised to sing.
I moved before I thought, diving towards the now-scattered bones of the hapless traveler. My hand caught up the skull and I hurled it at the bloated beast. It struck with an ill-sounding squelch, but that earned me the full gaze of the monster as its head twisted on its body.
Oh Velkin, you damned fool, I thought in horror as I staggered backward.
But a spray of sticky blood erupted from the monster’s face and its eyes bulged hideously. Then it was still and I was left with my trembling limbs.
“Velkin,” Sir Ava called, a raggedness in her words. “Come pull me out from this blasted thing.”
I hurried to her side, the hot stench of the monster’s blood reeking in the back of my nose. She lay pinned under the thing, one of its spines having sheared through her armor and down through her stomach. Despite what I could only imagine was raw pain, she had a grimly triumphant smile.
“That’ll be a story to tell my father,” she said, and I glanced at the countless gashes gouged into the beast’s flesh. Her sword still jutted from a fold of segmented skin, only the hilt visible so that she must have at last thrust the weapon into the thing’s heart.
“Yes, that’ll be a story to be sure,” I said dully as I struggled to work free the spine.
“You needn’t be so careful,” she said while I hesitated to simply pull the spine from her. “I cannot feel anything as it is.” She offered me a dry smile. “If I could, I should imagine that there’s not enough courage in me to keep me from screaming.”
“There’s plenty of courage in you,” I said. “Plenty, to be sure.”
Once disentangled, I hefted her away from the monster’s body. She made some feeble protest against me wrapping her in my blanket, but I would not—nay, I could not—leave her shivering in the coldness that sank with the setting sun. She was dying. She knew it and I knew it, so I spared us both the empty blathering of encouraging words. I did talk to her, but what I said is of no matter. What matters is that I did not leave Sir Ava to die alone in the cold.
“Go find your song, Velkin the skald,” she said to me at last, and those were the last words she spoke.
I returned the mortal remains of Sir Ava to an outpost of her order. Words were said about her courage, faith, and resolve, but I stood in silence as in my mind I wove together the song I hoped would be worthy of her. The travelers’ road was now safe—or at least safe from one monster—and Sir Ava’s battle was finished. Mine, however, was yet to begin because I had a promise yet to fulfill: I must take her story before her father the king.
Wandering harpers have precious little money, so when I reached the royal city, I had to make myself as presentable as I could through my own ingenuity. Oh, indeed, I washed and mended my own traveling clothes. A skald’s life is not what you think it might be, I suppose. Despite my efforts, I still went before the castle guards as a patchwork wanderer who had only a harp to mark that I might be worthy of some small nibble of esteem.
“A skald, you say?” the seneschal commented, his raised eyebrow saying more than his words.
“I am the apprentice of Tarvis, the Singer of Spears,” I said, gathering my master’s prestige about me like a cloak. “I have a song for King Matthias that I have composed in honor of his legacy.” I knew enough of the vainglory of minor kings to make a compelling case with mentions of honor delivered in a haughty confidence I didn’t feel.
That was how I found myself besieged on all sides in the king’s courtroom with the aromas of feasting drifting thickly through the air while I tuned my harp much as a warrior tends to her sword. Never before had I found myself amid such an audience, but it was not the presence of the great and the good that made nerves numb my fingers. There was one person who I wanted to make proud with my song, and she was not among that number, but her memory stood at my shoulder.
“Go find your song, Velkin the skald,” she had said, but this wasn’t my song, this one was hers, and I drew a deep breath as I prayed to any god that I might get this one song right.
King Matthias swept in to the courtroom and everybody rose in a rustling of supple leather and fine fabrics. I saw Sir Ava in his eyes which brushed over us all like a falcon seeking its prey. What emotion would I see in those keen eyes when I sang of his daughter’s sacrifice?
At a gesture from the king, I plucked the strings of my harp, sending notes high and sweet to fly toward the rafters and ascend to the heavens like the smoke of burnt offerings. For a moment I was priest and warrior both, blending the world of the living and the dead, and calling forth spirits into our midst. The words darted and slashed like a sword, striking again and yet again at the monster called into our minds. My part in the fight, little though it was, I did not add. This wasn’t my song, as I said.
I said I could play a mountain to tears, and I pray that Sir Ava’s soul smiled to see a room of fine and noble people sob as she lay dying before her dread foe. But if I could bring tears to a mountain, then moving King Matthias was like trying to rend the heavens in their vastness. Only his eyes remained dry as the last of the notes faded into the hearts of those gathered.
“So then, it is true that she is dead?” he said as I lowered my harp.
“Yes, my liege. Your daughter died valiantly.”
“I have no daughter.” Not a gust of breeze stirred in that room. He rose and plucked a shiny thing from the pouch on his belt. With a flick of his hand, he tossed it toward me so that it clattered over the ground to rest at my boot. “Take that for your trouble, harper. It has no value to me, although it once would have to her.”
Torchlight glinted on a signet ring set with an onyx stone deep and sparkling as the midnight sky. I bent to pick it up, and when I stood up, the king was already striding from the hall with guards flanking him.
Sir Ava had asked of me one thing, and I had failed.
Nobody spoke words of dismissal, but I knew that my part had been played. Sick in my heart, I slipped the signet ring on my little finger and packed away my harp. The time had come for me to return beyond the Skyward Peaks. As I walked from the room, I caught dangerous thoughts in the eyes of those who had been my audience. Thoughts about what manner of king would so ill-treat his own child, who would value a sacrifice to a god with such contempt. Troubling thoughts. The sort of thoughts I would remember in later days when I heard news that an assassin’s blade had claimed the king and tossed his kingdom into unholy chaos. I am not given to religious thoughts, but even I knew that one does not dare offend the gods in such a way.
Now then, I have finished my last cup of wine for the night, and I will tell you now that you reach an age where you don’t know whether it’s the wine or the years that veil memories in a haze of tears. Either way, you are yet young, and should pay me no heed for my head is full of songs unsung and stories faded to dust. But I can say that the name of Sir Ava has lingered beyond the mountains, and on these sorts of nights, I like to imagine that I did not fail in the end, after all.
©May 2021, Melion Traverse
Melion Traverse‘s work has appeared in Cast of Wonders, Deep Magic, and Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores, among others. Traverse has also published Exile and Valiance: A Collection of Short Stories of Courageous Wome. This is Traverse’s first appearance in Swords & Sorcery.