by Ali Abbas
in Issue 161, June 2025
Jan cursed as his spear tip jarred in the dense foliage. Steel chimed on a hard surface. The broad trail left by the boar veered sharply left as it, too, had been forced to change course. He dropped to his haunches to read the spoor. The boar was tiring. They both were.
He levered himself to his feet, set his spear aside and reached into the mass of vines and briars. A thick branch leapt out, its wicked, dagger-like barb pierced his cheek. He tried to push it away but despite its width it sprang back like new growth. He stopped it with a bracered forearm and with his free hand drew his broad-bladed knife. At the first nick, the branch shrank away, oozing sap. He reached beyond it. Beneath the green shield hid a wall of pale stone, scarred with moss.
Jan wiped at the blood dripping off his cheek as he considered his options. His meal was gone. As he watched, the rope-like vines seemed to grow back across the path cut by the boar. He could slog on for hours to no avail. While he’d not seen signs of human habitation for days and this forest seemed untamed and unclaimed, walls meant a Lord. He’d suffered their whims in younger years. Better to seek hospitality or permission than be hung as a poacher.
As he caught his breath, something pressed at his foot: a questing shoot wrapped itself around his ankle. He kicked it away, shuddering as it curled reluctantly back into itself. He checked over his shoulder as something flickered at the edge of his vision. The press of branches and leaves shuddered with pent-up violence.
Time to move, he thought. The wall provided a vantage to get his bearings. Spear strapped to his backpack, he positioned his fingers carefully around the thorns and pulled, briars scratching his leather jerkin until he found the top of the wall. He blinked into brightness on the broad outer wall surrounding an ancient castle: a squat, square keep with a single tower. The forest stopped completely at the wall, leaving him exposed. He dropped flat.
There was a flash of movement as the boar fled across the bailey below, leaving an arrow-straight trail in the overgrown grass. Then the scene was still. No guards patrolled, no servants called. It looked deserted, but with the glow of sunlight on stone and the sway of the tall grass, it did not seem dead, merely waiting.
Keeping low, Jan scuttled along the wall, scouting the castle until he came to the tumbled remains of the gatehouse and the shadow of a path to the castle.
He found the first body in the weed-choked forecourt. Rusted armor and rotting clothes fell away under his fingers. Jan rolled the body over and froze. The skin was stark white and stretched tight, still as smooth as if the soldier had died recently, without a hint of decay or corpse stench. He rolled the body back, hiding the hungry snarl in the peeled-back lips and sunken eyes.
The hilt of a sword lay nearby, rust chewing away quillons of antique design. The blade was nothing but a brown stain on the ground, pointing toward the castle. Jan eased into a crouch and edged onward. Nothing stirred but warnings, skittering up and down his spine. When he reached the shadow of the wall, he rose to his full height and stretched his back. He knew he was being daft. Anyone watching could have put an arrow in him.
Inside the keep there were other bodies, all looking as if they had died recently but for the ruin of their clothes. Soldiers and civilians, men and women, without any sign of what killed them. Their eyes stretched wide open, staring at the sky. Between them, he found the moss-covered bones of animals: dogs, and the vast ribs of horses, shrouded in the rotted remains of saddles and tack.
Another mystery waited at the base of the tower. An irregularly shaped patch of ground where nothing grew. Shattered human bones littered the bare earth. Jan looked up. Window ledges jutted from the rough stone walls. Someone had taken a fall, it seemed like a good place to go next.
At the stairwell to the tower, he found a complete human skeleton: the skull grinning out of a pot helmet, scraps of livery visible under rust-chewed armor. In contrast to the other corpses, the skeleton could have been there for centuries, flesh wholly rotted away. It was the most normal thing he had seen so far.
Other skeletons littered the stairwell, bodies askew. The stonework was chipped where blades had missed their mark. They were all soldiers of the same allegiance, less than two dozen in all.
Jan picked his way around them. At the top of the stairs, leaning against a heavy oak door, he found a skeleton alone. The clothes bore the same colours, but there was a gold circlet in the helmet and an emerald in the hilt of its sword.
Jan ran his thumb over the emerald. He could eat for a year off that. He stopped. There was no harm in it; the soldier was long dead after all. Jan took a sharp breath. He was not that man, yet.
He couldn’t make sense of it. Twenty men should have been able to hold a tower like this for a good while, but whoever had defeated them had left no trace of their own losses. The other army, and the castle’s denizens, lay outside, perplexingly undecayed.
He turned away from the skeleton and focused on the door. It was studded and banded with iron, secured with a lock that crumbled when he touched it. When he tried to open the door, it didn’t budge. He gave it a kick. The door shuddered. It had been barred from the inside. Whatever was in there had been fought over to the last life in the castle, it would surely reward some effort. He kicked again and something snapped. The door swung wide open. Light poured in from empty casements and splashed around a four-poster bed lined with heavy curtains. He approached and gently parted the curtains with his spear.
The fabric collapsed in a cloud of dust. Jan leapt back into a crouch. There was no other movement. The dust settled slowly to reveal a young woman on the bed. She had the same cold features as the bodies outside. He leaned forward, fascinated by the apparent peace of her passing. Unlike the others, her eyes were closed and her expression was not one of horror or anger but drawn down with deep sorrow.
He cast around the room, looking for clues to what had happened, but his eyes kept drifting back to the woman.
She would have been pretty in life, beautiful even. He had listened to enough bards’ tales to know what one did when faced with a damsel seemingly dead on a bed. He paused, suddenly acutely aware of his filthy state. He wiped his face with a rag soaked from his leather flask, smearing dirt and reopening the cut on his cheek. He wiped away the first bead of blood. There was nothing more he could do. If the bards were right it only needed a kiss to wake her. He leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers.
Nothing happened. He waited a little longer before laughing at his folly and set off in search of the boar.
***
Jan guessed the boar was still somewhere within the walls, as no tracks led back out. He wouldn’t face it in the dark. He made camp for the night in the main entrance and settled before the sinking remains of his fire.
He had just dozed off when a shrill, monstrous scream split the night.
He rolled to his feet, instantly alert. Nothing moved. He kept his breathing shallow. The only sound was the hammering of his heart. Taking a smouldering chair leg from the fire, he held it in one hand and his spear in the other. Another inhuman scream broke out, a shriek jagged with pain, rushing through his ears and down his spine.
The echoes bounced off the walls, coming from the cellar.
It was pitch dark. Jan blew gently on his makeshift firebrand to draw a lick of flame from its tip and eased his way down the stairs. There was a gasp and hurried steps as his light reached the cellar floor. The boar lay dead, its throat ripped open. There was not a drop of blood.
He had been awakened by the boar’s dying screams. He crept forward. There was a whisper behind the flame’s crackle, fading as if someone or something edged away from him. The walls began to curve together; unless there was another exit, whatever had killed the boar was trapped.
“Please, don’t hurt me.”
The words stopped him dead. It was a woman’s voice, light and musical. He toed forward. Against the gloom, in the disintegrating rags of her pearl-seeded gown, was the woman from the tower. The flickering light reflected off her ghostly skin. It glistened on the blood running out of the corner of her mouth.
Terror radiated from her wide, wild eyes. And the boar was dead, despite her slight form and apparent lack of weapons. She was dangerous, she was afraid, and there was only one way out.
He beckoned her to come forward. She shook her head.
He lifted the torch, leaning it forward to share the pool of light, his spear swung behind his back, unthreatening and lost in shadow. He forced a smile.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said gently. She shook her head again.
Moving with slow precision, eyes fixed on her beautiful gray eyes, he put the torch on the ground. Then he stepped half a pace back. Ceding ground, the light, and a weapon.
She gave him a nervous smile and took a step. As she reached for the burning chair leg, he knocked her senseless with the butt of his spear.
***
Jan sensed the moment the woman awoke. Dawn paled the indigo sky. She looked over at him, eyes heavy with the lingering effects of his blow. Her gaze flicked behind him, where the boar hung from a rope. He’d gutted it and was now roasting a small piece in the fire.
“You said ‘don’t be afraid,’” she accused.
Jan grunted.
After a moment, she said, “You should bury the entrails.” She motioned with her head around the courtyard. “The others are probably too far gone now, but the smell of blood might rouse them.”
He nodded but did not move, trying to appear calm. He wasn’t ready to test her strength or speed. The boar had made that mistake.
“What year is it?”
“1270 or so after the birth of our Lord.” He nibbled at the burnt edge of the meat.
When it seemed he would not speak again she broke the lengthening silence. “Don’t you want to know what happened?”
He shrugged and went on eating.
“I haven’t talked to anyone for over two hundred years.”
“I haven’t talked to anyone for two weeks, didn’t really feel the loss.”
She laughed, a tinkling sound which coaxed a smile from his dour expression. He clenched his teeth and turned away. Two hundred years, she must think him a fool.
Silence swelled between them. She shifted uncomfortably, scraps of her dress shedding onto the ground. She tucked her bound hands in close, as if self-conscious of her appearance.
Despite his glib answer, Jan found her words had awakened a hunger in him to talk. He traced a tiny cross in the air, aware of her keen regard, and steeled his resolve to look her in the eye.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?”
Her words came out in a rush.
“My father was the Duke. He held to the old ways, not the new One God and Three. He called the local druids when I came of age. Each of them blessed me, except one.” Her lips twisted. “My uncle was apprenticed to the druids. He lusted for me, and for his brother’s seat, but the druids would not let him go, so he laid dark spells over the castle and everyone in it.”
Jan nodded. “The old ways aren’t dead, whatever the priests say. And the bards will tell you the mad things men do for love and power.”
“Power, not love. My uncle didn’t know the meaning of the word. He wanted command of things, and I was one of them.” She looked into the fire for a while, as though her reawakened mind was reconstructing the memories. “My uncle cut my father’s throat and used blood magic to bind everyone in the castle to his will. He was casting a spell to secure the walls when my brother returned early from patrol with his named men. I called to my brother from the tower to turn back and save himself but he wouldn’t go without me.”
Jan closed his eyes, recapturing what he had seen through the castle. All manner of bodies seemingly recently killed, and the skeletons of long-dead soldiers in the stairwell.
“It was your brother and his men in the stairwell. They all died protecting you. Leaving you alone.”
His observation startled her into a choked sob.
“My uncle had locked me in the tower room. When he burst in he was wounded, pursued by my brother. Whatever he needed to do to control the blood magic was left incomplete. The madness was already in me as my uncle locked the door. I fell on him, so thirsty, so hungry. I think he was surprised by my strength. When I realized what I had become I barred the door against my brother and hurled my uncle’s body and the key from the window. I prayed to the old Gods and the new one for death.” She shivered. “I wasn’t alone. Everyone caught in the binding spell had been changed. They hunted anything that lived. I was desperate to join them and too terrified to leave.” Her shoulders shook as she fought back the tears. “I listened to my brother die at the hands of retainers he’d known from the cradle. When there was nothing left to feed on they fell into torpor.”
Jan got up and drew his knife. She flinched as he approached. The twine binding her hands and feet fell away. From a scrap of canvas beside him he picked up the boar’s heart and held it out to her.
“It’s not blood, but it’s bloody.” He kept his gaze lowered.
She watched him with the boar’s heart in his hands. “You’re not afraid of me?”
“I am. Figure I’ll have better chances if there’s easier meat for you.” He hesitated in passing her the heart, his certainty ebbing as he looked away from her, growing again as he glanced her way. She was just a young woman, caught in a mad druid’s schemes. She was a monster who had drunk her uncle’s blood and hurled the body from a window.
She seemed to understand the conflict in him.
“It isn’t your fault. Some of my coming-of-age spells were glamours, to make me more attractive and likeable. The magic makes you want to trust me.” She paused, a bitter note in her voice. “I wonder if anyone really liked me at all.”
He looked across at her, deliberately this time. “You could’ve feasted on folk, but you locked yourself in a tower. You could’ve killed me in my sleep. Instead, you faced a wild boar in the dark. I don’t know nowt about spells, but I know a bit about honor and a deal about courage. If there’s owt to like about a person, it’s them.”
She stood up and stretched. “Thank you,” she said, “your trust has warmed me more than the fire.” She looked out a nearby window to where the rising sun lit half of the bailey. She frowned. “The wall has gone.”
He followed her gaze. Overnight the briars had spread. No sign of the stone wall remained. A roiling mass of green barred any hope of escape.
“The last remnants of the securing spell must have broken,” she said.
“I thought it wasn’t completed.”
“It wasn’t, whatever he did was enough to keep my people inside and the forest at bay for centuries.”
“What’s changed?”
“How did you wake me?”
Colour rose under his ruddy skin.
“Oh.” She reached up to touch his face. The fresh scab on his cheek came away, leaving a drop of blood on her fingertip. She looked him in the eye and put the drop to her lips.
Without warning she doubled over, clutching at her belly. He caught her before she dropped to her knees. She sagged against him. He held her hair away from her face with his free hand as she heaved, bringing up nothing but a little spittle.
She pushed away and looked back at him with a feral glare, her teeth bared. He took a half step back, readying his body for a charge, but just as swiftly she collapsed into the grass. He approached warily as she pushed herself up on her elbows. When she looked at him again her eyes were cool and gray once more.
“I’m sorry,” she choked. He sat her up gently and handed her his flask. “It’s the spell, I’m trying to fight the hunger and it’s fighting back.” She took a long pull on the flask. “I don’t think I’m fit to re-join decent folk.” She turned and gave him a wan smile, vulnerable and brittle. “Since we’re trapped here, and I am the Duchess, I can offer you a job. What is your profession?”
“A huntsman…” he paused. “A soldier once, but I’m done with killing on another’s say so.”
She did not hesitate.
“Then you shall be my head huntsman,” she said with a wry smile. “The forest will bring animals with it.” She held out her hand with the fingers pointing down. “What is your name?”
“Jan. Jan of,” he paused, “it don’t matter where from anymore.”
“Will you stay with me, and serve me?”
Jan bowed awkwardly and kissed her hand. “Best offer I’ve ever had. I’ll stay.” He held her gaze, unabashed. He’d served barons and fought in armies. In this tattered noblewoman, laden with magic that made her both beautiful and deadly, whose demesne of ruins and corpses was being claimed by an enchanted forest, he thought he had at last found a nobility he could put his faith in. “What is your name, my lady?”
“Tamara, just Tamara.”
***
They walked around the tower. The undecayed bodies had started to crumble into dust, the stalled march of time rushing to reclaim them. Tamara paused at each one, recalling some memory of who the poor soul had been. Jan watched her shoulders droop under the weight of death. In contrast, her actions lightened him, bolstering the confidence he felt in her. Here was someone that cared for her people, unlike the venal lords he had left behind.
He offered his hand, unsure of how to provide comfort. She took it with a firm grip and grateful smile. They walked and she grieved. All the while, the forest closed the distance behind them consuming the bailey.
They took refuge in the tower. She slipped the circlet from her brother’s helmet and placed it on her own head, then pried the emerald from the sword and gave it to him.
“I shall be a just and kind duchess. Here is your payment for services rendered.”
He held the gem to the failing light, then slipped it into a pocket. “Not sure we’ll ever get to spend it.”
“We?”
He looked away, suddenly shy.
“If I give you an order will you obey?” she asked.
“I gave you my oath already.”
She turned to look out of the empty casement. The forest was almost at the keep.
“I feel the hunger coming. Don’t let me become one of them. You must stop me, by any means.” She waited until he nodded his assent.
Her craving grew as the sun dipped. He took her hands in his. When they slipped from his grasp, sweaty from her anxiety, he crushed her to him in an embrace, heedless of the proximity of her teeth to his neck. She buried her head in his shoulder and wept.
A change came upon her. Blood infused her pale cheeks and the glamour fell away from her features. She lifted her head and snarled at him. In her eyes there was a wild, alien look, ravenous and implacable.
Jan held her closer, pressing her face back into him. He felt her body shudder with pain, but he did not let her go. Tamara pulled away, her look sly then coquettish. She pursed her lips and raised her mouth. Jan stabbed away the rush of his desire and pulled her head back into the leather covering his shoulder. She beat at his back with her hands, bruising and potent, still fueled by the blood of the boar.
He held on, as she had held the memories of her people, and he did not let go as the pain of her clawing blossomed across the back of his neck. She screamed into his chest, a wild, animal cry that knew only its own hunger, that understood only its own need. He held on, through the gnawing, voracious magic that consumed her. Her teeth closed on the leather of his jerkin, biting as a soldier facing amputation.
He held her because all he had to offer were his strength and constancy, and his hope that just as the forest had at last broken free of the druid’s spells, so Tamara could fight off her curse. He would be her anchor in this tower until the forest tore it from beneath them.
The hunger vanished. With one last breath-stealing groan Tamara collapsed in Jan’s arms. When she lifted her head, the blessings and curse of the druids were gone. She had not just fought off her uncle’s dark magic, she had fought it all.
The face looking up at him was plainer, the eyes a fraction smaller, the lips not quite as full. It was Tamara’s true face. He kissed her, she returned it with a new hunger, quieter and more sustained, softer and stronger.
The release of the last spell quickened the forest. Thick rope-like branches reached the casements, searching for something to sustain their rapid growth. Jan and Tamara stumbled apart as the room shook and shivered, stones groaning under the weight. The stairwell collapsed, hurling a cloud of dust through the doorway.
A questing vine slithered into the room, thickening as it reached around the bed. Jan strode across to the window and looked out. The courtyard was lost in a mass of foliage, its burgeoning growth visibly slowing at last.
Tamara clutched the ledge with one hand and grasped Jan’s forearm with the other. “You have saved me, and all I have to offer you in return is death in this tower.”
He eased away her hand and ran his own over the vine coming into the room. It was already a foot thick, sticky with sap. It joined a heavy trunk just beyond the window. Other vines wrapped around the tower, gripping at uneven stones and crumbling mortar. Jan swept Tamara up into his arms.
“I’ll earn my wages, if you’ll let me?”
“I don’t understand.”
He grinned and stepped onto the casement, then tested the strength of the vine with a step. It bowed under their weight. It did not break. The encircling vines formed a new stairwell. Tamara laughed, a tinkling joyful laugh, as Jan carried her into the forest.
© June 2025, Ali Abbas
Ali Abbas is the author of two novellas: Silent Running is a hard sci-fi thriller published by Lost Colony Magazine, and Like Clockwork is a steampunk mystery published by Transmundane Press. A full list of published works and free to read stories is available on his author site at www.authoraliabbas.weebly.com . Ali maintains a blog at www.aliabbasali.com. This is his first appearance in Swords & Sorcery Magazine.
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