choose your own adventure, episode 4a

KNIGHT SWORD, EPISODE 4A

“No!” you whisper, grabbing Caius’s arm. “Can’t you hear the orcs in the kitchen? Let’s go upstairs, and through the chimney to the cellar!”

Caius gapes at you for just an instant, then gives a sharp nod, and the two of you race for the stairs. As you run, you hear a crackle and a thunderous roar as your father looses a blast of lightning into the fire devouring the front hallway.

Your hear Ulmoch bellow…but in rage, not in pain.

Then you are in the upstairs hallway, in your bedroom, and Caius pries away the iron grate covering the chimney opening. He scrambles into the chimney, and you follow, the rough, fire-blackened brick digging into your palms and bare feet. Thankfully, it’s the first month of summer, so the furnace below the house is cold.

Then you drop into the iron furnace and scramble into the cellar. Caius hastens to a wall lined with shelves and pushes a hidden switch. Part of the shelves swing open, revealing a narrow passageway lined with stone.

“Come, girl,” says Caius. “Quickly!”

You take a step forward, and then hear your father scream overhead…but in pain, not in rage. The scream rises louder and louder, worse than anything you have ever heard…and then ends in a sharp crackling noise.

You freeze, horrified, the sheathed longsword trembling in your hands.

Caius growls and grabs your shoulder. “Damn it, go! They’ll be after us in another moment.”

You stumble after him, weeping, and Caius swings the hidden door shut behind you. He produces a lantern, and leads you through the narrow stone tunnel. It ends in a set of rough-cut stairs, and you hurry after him.

You emerge in the ruined stone nave of Moridun’s church to the High God. The roof caved in long ago, the walls blackened by fire, the grounds overgrown with weeds and brush. Yet the ruins still seem to have a solemn grandeur about them, even with vines threading through the long-broken windows.

To the west you see a fiery glow illuminating the night sky.

Your father’s house. Burning to the ground.

Caius is muttering to himself.

“This is still hallowed ground,” he says. “That bloody Night Raven can’t set foot here. We could hide out here until dawn…no. Ulmoch can’t enter here, but his pet orcs can. We’ll have to get out of the city. Here.”

He takes you by the shoulder and steers you to the weathered stone altar. Behind it lies a tarp-wrapped bundle, and Caius opens it to reveal clothes, weapons, and other supplies. “Change out of the nightgown and get dressed. Jerome said to give the sword to Curtwall, and by the High God that’s what we’re going to do.”

Caius turns his back, and you dress yourself with numb fingers, pulling on trousers, boots, and a leather jerkin. Your father. You have to go back for Jerome. But he’s probably dead, isn’t he? That Raven killed him, and you remember Ulmoch’s burning yellow eyes. He’ll kill you, if he catches you, and take the sword.

You vow that the Ravens will never have the sword…whatever it is.

“How…how will we get out of the town?” you say. “The gates are closed at sunset.” Packs of wolves wander the hills outside of Moridun, along with the occasional band of wild orcs out of the Haunted Lands. And other things, darker things, stalk the hills after nightfall.

“I have friends in the militia,” says Caius. “They’ll let us through the gates, and we can make for Curtwall’s farm.”

“That’s…a good idea,” you say.

Except your mind informs you that it’s really not. Ulmoch had at least thirty orcish soldiers with him at your father’s house, and you’ve never heard that the High Queen’s Ravens are stupid. What if he left a guard of orcs at the gates, in case anyone escaped from your father’s house?

And there’s another way. You think of your betrothed, Dietrich. He and his father are two of the richest and most influential men in Moridun. If anyone can get you out of the town, Dietrich can.

And after what happened to your father, you badly want to see Dietrich.

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