The Jarl's Son, Chapter 13-2

A Meeting in the Mind, Part 2

Feb 22, 2025

Looking to start from the beginning? Read Chapter 1-1 here.

Wreathed in his lethargic haze, Marten’s awareness began to sink into a pitch void. The darkness behind his eyelids became absolute black and his breathing slowed, gradually lowering itself to the long rhythm of deep sleep. Yet while his awareness dulled, it never fully submerged itself in the comfort of that tantalizing chasm. Despite the combination of his mounting physical tiredness and his best efforts at relaxation, the best Marten could manage was to float along the surface of the barrier between wakefulness and sleep.

He laid like this for hours, his conscious mind in a constant stir. Every time it seemed to quiet, every time he began to sink beneath that surface, some new stray thought would deny his sleep with the fresh buoyancy of renewed alertness. After a while, the dull and distant sounds of the storm came back to him. The patter of heavy rain which had muted itself into muffled white noise started to become distinct again, as did the gusting of the wind outside. Yet it was the thunder which jolted him back into wakefulness. Its explosive thoom shattered the trancelike rhythm of the wind and rain, yanking him to full alertness with an adrenaline fueled start.

Lying in his bedroll, he stared up at the tawny brown canvas of his tent. The fire had weakened, and its low flames painted that brown canvas with dim shades of flickering orange. Outside, a flash of lightning heralded another crash of thunder, and then another after that. In his near-sleep, the storm had intensified.

Varro grumbled to his right. Crawling out of the tent, Marten took a cross-legged seat by the fire and watched the greatwolf. He still lay in his chosen corner, chin rested atop his crossed front paws. Instead of sleeping, though, he stared back at Marten, his brown lupine eyes reflecting the fire’s low flame. When another flash of lightning came, his eyes darted to some of the gaps in the ceiling and walls. When the thunder followed it, he grumbled again.

The greatwolf wasn’t scared, at least insofar as Marten could tell. He wasn’t whimpering, nor was he trying to force his way into the tent as he had on that rainy night when Gaiur disappeared. All he did was watch for the lightning, grumble at the thunder, and adjust his position to better see the flashes through the gaps. Marten guessed that Varro’s reaction would be very different if they’d been outside, but it seemed as if the shelter the abandoned farmhouse provided them was enough to keep Varro relatively calm.

Relatively was the key word there. Though he wasn’t frightened into a full panic, Marten could see the hallmarks of nervous unease in Varro’s behavior. His grumbling when the thunder clapped was part of it, and it often came paired with a quick two-or-three wag beating of his tail against the floorboards. Especially loud booms would raise his hackles, the way he kept watching those leaking gaps spoke to an animal expectation of attack from the raging storm.

“Seems we won’t be getting much sleep after all,” Marten chortled wryly.

Frustrated, he shook his head and began gathering more scraps to feed to the fire. A couple broken chair backs, half a table leg split down the middle, and a curved section of an old wooden barrel frame were carefully piled into the pit. They swiftly took fire, resuscitating the waning flame and filling the small house with warmth and cozy orange light. Then he took a seat beside Varro, easing his nerves with gentle pats and scratches while they waited for the weather to ease so that sleep could finally take them.

Eventually it did. Marten had laid back beside the greatwolf at some point. With hands laced behind his head, he watched the rainwater spill through the gaps in the roof on the other side of the house while the flickering orange light of the fire danced across the vaulted ceiling. He didn’t know exactly when he’d fallen asleep there, but when he woke he could see the cold light of morning seeping through those same gaps along with the continuing rain.

Alas, his sleep was such that he felt as if he’d closed his eyes in the middle of the night, only to reopen them a moment later to find early morning. Deep. Hollow. Dreamless. Cursing under his breath, he sat up and made for the front door. Cold rain, thick gray fog, and waterlogged soil greeted him. It would be a bad day for travel.

Rummaging through his supplies, he prepared a simple breakfast of barley porridge with dried currants and boiled the salt out of some preserved meat for Varro. The grey furred beast wasn’t especially pleased with the offering, but he ate it eventually. Once Marten finished his own meal, he wrapped his cloak tight about his body and quickly braved the rain to check on his mare. Overgrown as the old farm had become, there were enough grasses and greens near the fences beneath the awnings for her to graze if she got hungry. Of course, this assumed she wouldn’t be put off by the rain. If she was then he might have to break into his grain supply to help feed her, too; hardly an ideal situation considering their journey had hardly begun.

The rain kept up through the rest of the day, and then into the next day and the day after that. Nights always came with worsening downpours, but the lightning had eased significantly. Any hope that fact brought Marten of better sleep were summarily dashed, though. With his feelings of exhaustion, frustration, and stress continuing to mount, his sleep only worsened across the following nights.

Those feelings soon darkened his mood. He began to flit between bored and impotent anger, and the dour depths of creeping worry and depression. By the time the fourth day came, he started to wonder if he’d be able to travel the roads at all once the storm broke. Torrential rains like these were wildly destructive, capable of bringing flash floods, landslides, and fires if the lightning got bad. Sometimes they even caused crop failures by battering and waterlogging fields. Grain stalks and the bushes or trees that produced fruit could end up damaged and broken by strong wind, while certain staple vegetables could be drowned in the abundance of water.

Yet it was the mud that concerned Marten most of all. This rain was sure to leave the roads a sticky, slippery mess even after the storm broke. Severe rains like this always soaked the roads, and that greatly increased the risk of travelers getting stranded or injured as they traveled. Mud was easy to sink into, and it had a tendency to suck in around a man’s feet and trap him. While there was less risk of that for a horse thanks to the shape of their hooves, that risk still existed for them, too, as did the risk of slipping and falling. Such conditions necessitated slow and deliberate travel.

To Marten’s mind, this all meant a greater distance now existed between himself and Gaiur, wherever she was.

Night descended on the fourth day. The dim and dreary rain soaked gray that filled the day shifted to charcoal black before the sun finished setting. That then gave way to an indigo so dark as to be nigh indistinguishable from the former, such that Marten questioned whether or not he was truly seeing it.

His exhaustion had thoroughly worsened across the last few days. Forced to remain sedentary by the storm and assailed by the stresses and worries that nagged at him, he found himself staring blank and nigh thoughtless at whatever caught his eye. The fire, which burned ever lower as his supply of dry fuel dwindled. The western half of the house, its damaged roof having let in so much water now that large puddles had formed on that side, no longer able to properly drain thanks to the gradual warping of the floorboards over the years. Varro, who had grown anxious being inside this enclosed space for so long. His dwindling supplies, which should’ve enabled him to continue combing the forest these last four days before stopping at Tårnkryss to restock. He’d started rationing those supplies early, but even with that he’d likely run out in two days at the most.

Among all of this, thoughts of Gaiur remained constant. The longer the storm forced him to remain in place, the darker his thoughts turned and the more bleak his outlook became. Night after night he struggled to sleep, and when sleep finally came, he struggled to dream. How was he to have any hope of meeting with Renald if he couldn’t make himself dream? And if he couldn’t contact Renald, then what hope did he have of finding Gaiur?

Part of him genuinely believed she was lost to him now. He doubted he’d ever see her alive again, if he saw her at all. Earlier in the week those thoughts clashed with his resolve, but being stuck in this abandoned hovel for days on end had weakened that resolve to the point of silence. Hope, it seemed, had left him. All he could do at this point was lie down and try to sleep once more, fruitless though it was sure to be. Closing his eyes, he draped his cloak around his body like a blanket and tried to shut everything out.

He failed, as he so often had until now. Though the rain had faded down to that muted thrum he heard as he tried to sleep on that first night, the crackle of the fire remained sharp in his ears. He rolled to his side, laying his head on one arm while resting the other over his upward facing ear. It did nothing to muffle the sound. Then he rolled the other direction, pulling the hood of his cloak over his head in addition to his arms. Yet again, it did nothing.

Defeated, Marten rolled onto his back, arms splayed wide. A long, heavy breath escaped his nostrils, and he stared up at the canvas of his tent. The room had gone dark. Darker than dark. He stared into a space of absolute blackness, an impenetrable void which seemed to house no light at all. That didn’t make sense. The only way that could be the case is if the fire went out, but he still heard it burning.

Frowning, he sat up and looked around. There was nothing. No light. No color. Nothing familiar save for himself and his garments. Even his bedroll, which he still clearly felt beneath him, couldn’t be seen. He stood, expecting to feel the sloping canvas body of his tent against his head. He didn’t. Marten rose to full height as if both his tent and his tarp didn’t exist at all, and as soon as he did, he realized the soft sensation of his bedroll had vanished, too.

Another realization struck him then, as well; he could no longer feel the warmth of the fire. In fact, he couldn’t feel anything that wasn’t directly part of him in this moment, nor could he taste or smell anything apart from himself, either. It was as if he and he alone existed in this colossal well of endless blackness, and he was quite convinced that was the case until he noticed a flicker of orange light off in the far distance.

He tried to walk towards it, but there was nothing upon which his feet could find purchase. Adrift in this empty space, he suddenly found himself unsure of how to move at all. This sensation only lasted a moment, as he soon realized the fire in the distance was growing larger as he approached. Or perhaps it approached him?

Whatever the case, he rapidly covered the distance to the flame. Drawing closer, he noticed that what he witnessed wasn’t just one flame, but many. Dozens of torchlight flames all flickering in many rows of ten. Rows of flames which illuminated faces and bodies draped in heavy furs. Rows of flames which flickered from the ends of tallow soaked arrows, raised and drawn back. Rows of flames which were loosed to ignite a village of screaming victims.

Marten recognized the scene of brutal carnage playing out before him. It matched what Gaiur told him of the Red Bear’s raids. Some three score men rampaged through the village. They torched homes, wantonly slaughtered the livestock, and put every man and boy to the sword in the most savage manner he’d ever had the misfortune to witness. Women were captured, and those of birthing age were lined up and stripped while those too old or young met the same fate as the men.

Among those poor souls lined up, their bodies now being painted in blood with primitive ritual markings, one felt strangely familiar to him, though he could not place why. Near the middle of the line, she had long chestnut hair that reached down to her middle back and piercing blue eyes that were reddened with tears. Mud and blood caked her face the same as the rest of the women. However, she stood out from the rest for one distinct reason: her belly was swollen with child.

“A truly horrendous sight,” came a solemn and familiar voice from his left. “I’d hoped to never lay eyes upon this hellish scene again. Alas, it seemed as if returning to this nightmare would be my only recourse for finding her.”

Renald, that silvery arctic fox which glowed like the light of the moon, looked up to Marten at last, giving what the Jarl’s son could only describe as a wistful vulpine smile. “Imagine my surprise, then, when I come to find you here instead of her,” he said.

Though he was wholly disgusted by the brutality which played out before his eyes, Marten couldn’t help but smile and offer a sigh of relief. “Night Walker keep us, he delivered my message,” he said.

“Message?” Renald replied with a curious tilt of his head. “What message would that be, my good man?”

“The one I gave to Erik four nights ago. The one asking you to meet with me,” Marten said.

To his surprise, Renald scrunched up his nose and shook his head. “I haven’t seen the boy for a short while now, so I’m afraid I received no such message,” he said. “Which makes it all the more curious that it’s you whom I should find here instead of Gaiur, given that this was her nightmare and all.”

“Her nightmare?” Marten asked. From the sympathetic look of expectation on Renald’s face, this wasn’t far from the first time the chatty critter had encountered Marten’s particular line of confusion.

“It’d be best if we find somewhere else to settle in and talk,” the fox said. “Quiet is better when lengthy explanations are involved, after all.”

Thank you for reading.
The Jarl’s Son sees Gaiur the Valdunite return to embark on a new adventure and acts as the follow-up to my dark fantasy mystery tale, In the Giant’s Shadow. The previous story isn’t required reading to understand and enjoy this tale, but doing so will enhance the experience.

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My first novella, In the Giant’s Shadow, is available for purchase! Lured to the sleepy farming community of Jötungatt by a mysterious white raven, Gaiur the Valdunite soon finds herself caught in a strange conspiracy of ritual murder and very real nightmares.

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