The Gros Skerd

They reached the small bay town of Quorne from whence they bought fresh supplies and rented teamsters. Off they headed into the hinterlands. A single day's crossing of valley trails in the Sierra Morne. Once cleared, they set off through the scrublands of Gros Skerd, the Great Squander.

Along with Sieur Kel Télsarràs, three priests, five dragoon-meers, two calvary escorts on horseback, two oxen driven carts with a pair of crossbow armed drivers in each, they journeyed forth.

As per his usual course, Sieur Télsarràs slept no more than four hours in a single day, and he spent most of the remainder of his time keeping vigil, watching the scrubland range with skeptical eyes.

He saw much in the way of activity. Bandits scurried low through the brush and hid in the surrounding stoney rock formations. Miniature mesas that never rose more than thirty foot in height jutted out of the landscape.

Bows peeped out from the smaller formations. Arched out above the spies' shoulders, the longbows would often give them away.

As much as Sieur Télsarràs would have enjoyed slaughtering every gods thrice-damned one of them, he did not give chase, and he left them alone.

He wasn't here to dispense chivalric justice on the wicked of this backwater.

They in turn were merely scouts who upon seeing the well-armed rough men as they stood on top of the oxen carts goading them to mêlée would instead stay their hands for easier prey.

On the second day through the Gros Skerd, the Knight took a minor change in bandit demeanor to be curiously ominous.

The bandits he witnessed up country had worn tattered leathers, jerkins, and wrappings covered in simple cowls.

Some bore wooden shields, mannered lovingly with grain cut and decoratively beveled thorn and thicket.

What caught his eye this morning was the color of the bandit's cowls. Earlier bandits wore cowls of light tan that matched the shrubbery, in a very practical manner of camouflage.

The bandits they faced today wore cowls colored bright orange. A color that made it too easy on the eye to spot their skulking attempts at raid.

Abicore sat at the side where Sieur Télsarràs stood. They had become friends since the day they shared drinks in the Knight's quarters.

"I see that frown, Sieur," said the priest. "And I believe I know the cause."

"It appears we are entering another bandit lord's kingdom. he most likely has a greater degree of control over his men than those in the more littoral clime we faced earlier."

"I doubt if they are bandits, Sieur Télsarràs. Those cowls have no practical value. There must be purpose behind that sacrifice of their better advantage.

"Likely these are men of some obscure and malevolent faith. They won't be easily deterred from attacking us due to any rational consideration such as their own personal mortality."

Another arbinger of what they possibly faced occurred shortly after the conversation. From behind a small craggy hill smoke signals puffed up into the sky.

A quarter of a mile to the West, the Knight commanded one of two cavalry officers to exchange places with him. He rode into the shrubland to where the signals originated.

For the hinterlands, Sieur Télsarràs wore armor consisting of loose tan colored chain over light dyed leathers. He bore his wide edged bastard as he strode up.

Three bandits crouched by the fire. One of them threw stink berries into the fire to give the smoke a dark-hued tar like consistency. The other two bandits caught the smoke under a blanket and released blooms into the sky.

The three cowled bandits heard the galloping destier rushing up upon them. The first to react was the bandit holding up a tin pan full of stink berries.

She threw the pan down and reached for a weapon. The Knight could see she was a scrawny girl not even five feet in height. She grabbed a long dart from a makeshift bandolier as the Knight jumped off the horse.

She sized him up as she slid the dart into the sling shaft of an atlatl. The dart was expertly aimed at his face.

Sieur Télsarràs brought the broadside of his bastard up and deflected the dart to the ground at his feet.

She scampered around staying low as she readied another dart. Her eyes grew wild with determined desperation.

Another bandit rushed him holding a pair of axes, his arms flailing wildly. The knight sidestepped, pivoted on his left boot, and then in a squatted stance, brought the bastard up in a tight swoop that cut the bandit's arm off just below the armpit.

Unfortunately, the bandit girl got a good hit on him. The dart pierced into his shoulder through chain link and leather binding.

Sieur Télsarràs realized she aimed for the vulnerability in his arm to force him to drop his bastard, so he switched the weight of his hands to weld it so as to bear more weight on his left arm as he felt the sting course through his flesh.

In spite of himself, he smiled. However, this was no time to admire her handiwork that just so happened to pierce into his flesh.

The axe welder fell to the Knight's feet. He took the man's head with another cleave. The girl closed in to get a better shot; her eyes fixed upon his jugular.

The decapitated head skirted down against his knee. He forced it to bounce up and kicked it into the girls knuckles. She dropped the atlatl.

Beneath the shadow of a figure towering over him, Sieur Télsarràs executed his next move. He slipped low on bended knee beneath an obsidian spearhead. The knight pushed it upward with his mailed hand while thrusting the bastard with the other. It ripped through the flesh and disemboweled the third bandit.

He kept his eyes on the remaining girl who was now reaching for a dagger she sheethed on her thigh.

"Stay your hands, girl," he commanded with his bastard inches away from her. "I don't kill women folk unless it's absolutely beyond even necessary."

She raised her hands up. The knight could only guess her age. He was uncertain if it was age or malnutrition that contributed to her diminutive size.

Her hair was a mouse's brown with uncontrolled curls pulled back beneath a scarf to keep out of her face. Her eyes green and wide with the whites of fear.

The cowl she wore bore some sort of emblem whose coloration could barely be distinguished from the light orange of the cloak.

It was a very old variation of the oef'a'sekt sigil of four dragons set between three swords. In this design before him, the sigil was set within a pentagram.

She stared back at his own house emblem engraved in the sternum plate of his chain mail. A diamond inside of a diamond causing an eclipse of the sun.

"You are, Sieur Kel Télsarràs, the Winter Knight," she said, her eyes now more curious than afraid.

"True enough, maiselle. Who might you be?"

"Brenduanne. They call me Brendi."

"They tell of knights in the Gros Skerd?"

"We are still folk of the Suüd, Sieur. No matter how forsaken."

He glanced towards the two bodies, and the desert terrain from which they reaped a meager existence. and an uncomfortable feeling stirred in the Knight's throat.

He returned his attention to the marksman.

"Maiselle Brenduanne, how is it you are the expert armsman of your troupe?"

She stared down at the dirty brown boots she wore. He noticed their unusual for desert terrain buckles. School girl shoes.

Emblems on the exterior seam that fastened the buckles were of a small compass and a needle, only given to members of the College of Geometers pass their sophomore year.

"My papa taught me before he died. Now, I mostly hunt prairie rats for the rebels."

"That takes a good eye what you did," he complimented.

"I have one good eye and one great eye."

He laughed as his eyes turned to the dart pinned in his shoulder.

"Indeed, you do, maiselle."

With his blood heat lessening its course through his veins, he now felt the pain wedge into him sharply.

"Poisoned?" He asked as he plucked out the dart.

"Poison is evil. I would never use it, Sieur."

He studied the dart's needle. Lowered his head and peered back at her green eyes.

"So is banditry."

"You have. We have not." Her chin proffered in challenge.

From his periphery, Sieur Télsarràs saw the oxen carts approach. The other horseman had arrived sooner, but he kept at a distance as the Knight spoke to the girl.

"What you lack as a people in the Gros Skerd is virtue. People have endured and bested worse places without allowing themselves to become base."

Brendi's brows furrowed and the slits of her eyes tightened where creeses formed. Her neck tensed at his pronouncement. He pointed at the emblem on her cloak.

"What manner of god does that belong to?"

"One who watches over desert rats," she responded too quickly for the Knight to believe her response to be anything but a glib deflection.

But for what reason?

The dragoon-meers and the priests were approaching. Perhaps, she was taking the piss because she felt insulted by his characterization of her people.

He gave her an easy smile that often worked like a gris-gris charm on the fair sex. They could use whatever bit of knowledge she possessed.

"With that great eye of yours, you could make a good living as an armsman in service to the Queen. I am always needing new recruits."

She shook her head and she shrugged.

"Brendi, make not a move," Sieur Télsarràs commanded. "Peor, search her."

The dragoon-meer was thorough, but aware Sieur Télsarràs was scrutinizing his every move, he wasn't abusive.

He discovered two sets of six small throwing knives, and a pair of spiked brass knuckles hidden on her body.

To the dagger by her feet Télsarràs pointed; she handed over to the Knight. He flipped it around in his hand. The handle was made of brass.

Four snakes coiled with their mouths holding an ivory dodecahedron with red inscriptions. It belonged to an elite unit of dragoons, the Fire Eaters.

"Maiselle, this your father's?"

Brendi nodded. He handed her the blade back.

"High Ardant Abicore, this is maiselle Brenduanne. I charge you with her protection.

"Please assist in cleaning her up and see that her effects are returned to her. If she has no objections she is returning with us to Barso Castle where you will assist in her recruitment in our archery school."

She voiced no objection. Her eyes gazed slowly across the shrublands.

The Knight turned to his dragoon-meers.

"Everything not belonging to the maiselle, belongs to you to be divvied up by custom. With one exception, that shield by the spear welder.

"I want it for my own collection. If you see anything unusual bring it to me for examination before your divvy."

Sieur Télsarràs started to walk away to tend to his own wound when he recalled something that caught his ear earlier in their conversation.

"Maiselle Brenduanne", he called out.

The priest and his charge turned back towards him.

"Winter Knight? Is that what they call me in the Gros Skerd?"

Brendi appeared puzzled and searched his eyes. "It is part and partial to your very name, Sieur Télsarràs."

"Indeed it is. Names though don't really stand out on their own without some assistance. Is there any other reason for it?"

"Perhaps, Sieur. But I don't speak of such things. Prophecy is born of evil minds, they say."

He glanced down to her boots.

"You are an educated woman. What say you?"

"If not evil then assuredly crazed minds that spend too much time chasing ethereal things and not keeping boots planted steady to the Earth. I hear things, but please ask of someone who believes in absurd notions in my stead."

The ardant and the bandit girl were about to turn around again when the Knight called out once more.

"Padre," he called. "Perhaps you would know. Maiselle Brenduanne is reluctant to be truthful. What manner of god does that emblem belong?"

His naturally rounded shoulders squared up beneath his linen folds. Abicore studied his charge a moment before answering.

"To be honest, Sieur. I doubt the girl understands what that emblem truly represents. It is not one that comes from a religious order, at least as it pertains to their own insignia.

"It is a seal, a bind you may call it, for the very daimon djinn we seek."

"I'm not so stupid I don't know what it is for," Bremdi protested. "In the Gros Skerd, the closer you get to Dreíz, the very air is fraught. You catch a Daimon in you the way other people catch colds."

The Knight pondered upon her original answer to the same question.

"Maiselle Brenduanne, why did you give me a spiel about some protector of desert rats?"

"Sieur Télsarràs, before I answer, can you answer me? Is it true? You are here to clear the Gros Skerd of daimon djinn?"

He pondered upon her question before he answered.

"I'm here for one that wracks the soul of a medicine man, but this plague of daimons is a blight upon my Queen's Nation.

"It is an injustice to allow the land to grow fallow with daimon kind. I can swear to you that I will be back."

Brendi bowed her head and curtsied before the knight with more class than she pretended to be born.

"Then I can swear to you, Sieur Kel Télsarràs, my undying loyalty in return. Now for the truth.

"For the previous three eves, raiders, all stout men, big-hearted men even, not the crass bandits for whom we make common cause, but men loyal to the rebellion against Oblivion's pretenders, they have had the tendency to get that far away gaze in their eyes and wonder away from camp, climb the nearest hill and shout:

'''Winter Knight! Winter Knight! Sieur Télsarràs, I wait for thee!' Then the stricken souls rend their garments and fall face forward, flat dead."