The Myr Has a Thousand Eyes

The noble flees to the swamp, but what men or gods await him there?

Photo by Gatis Vilaks on Unsplash

Late spring — by rosy evening light the barge rounded the bend in the marsh. A steady northwesterly breeze touched the lateen sail with its yard bent diagonally across the barge’s fifty foot length and single cabin at its center. On every bank the golden stalks of berse swayed and feathered while a few copses of pine and birch kept whispered vigil. Reflections on the slow, dark water scried another world, perhaps one where they’d not been driven here. The wide sky spoke of the Myr in its vastness and on whose edge they drifted, bound for the interior.

Their wake slapped against a worn marble statue of a man standing in the channel, smiling. The statue’s hand pointed downstream and its chin reached just above the waterline — unusually deep due to recent rain. The barge’s ripples communicated upon every shore and far upstream to a single dock protruding from a shack. Out on the dock sat a lone monk, shaving.

The noble paced to the barge’s bow as they approached, accompanied by his guard. “Good evening, brother!” he called out. Although he wore undershirt and loose trousers the noble’s pedigree showed through — a rare sight in the Myr.

The monk briefly dabbled his razor in the water and stood, then caught a mooring line thrown by one of their pilots. “Good evening. I didn’t expect visitors this month.”

“Shall we not stop here?” the noble asked with concern, and though he fought to suppress his latent grief it manifested in his sagging eyelid and the corners of his thin lips. He touched his lank black hair, greased with perspiration though it wasn’t especially warm. “We could continue on, I wouldn’t impose…”

“No no, please!” said the monk. “My home be yours, though I fear you cannot stay the night.”

The small crew began disembarking, but the noble wavered. “We needn’t stop, brother. I wouldn’t violate a rule of your hermitage.”

“‘Tisn’t my rule, lord. ‘Tis the Sifgars’.”

The noble stopped, as did much of their crew. Those still onboard reached for spears and pistols. The guard palmed a sword pommel at his waist. Their eyes swung to the surrounding Myr as though they’d see them.

“Please lord,” the monk said, inferring the other’s nobility. “We should speak. Inside. Please be my guest this evening. I would insist.” With the hand holding the razor he gestured toward his shack.

The noble’s eyes did not leave the lands around. Berse stalks whispered. Birches quivered. Golden pollen puffed free of the spruces along the bank and speckled the dark waters. From somewhere in the Myr a curlew called.

“You’ll be safe sleeping on your barge!” the monk said. “Worry not. And I’ll inform the rest of your expedition once they arrive.”

“We’ve no other companions.”

“Truly? Are you pursued, then?”

Now the crew fell into an even deeper hush.

“What makes you say so, brother?”

“Another ship follows you.”

“The Sifgar follow us?”

“No. Someone from the outside, like you.”

Heads swung west whence they’d arrived. They saw naught and heard naught.

“Lord,” said the noble’s guard, “that could only be—“

“How do you know we’re followed?” the noble asked the monk.

“The birds.”

“What… what of the birds, brother?”

“They… fly differently.” The monk shrugged, but looked uncomfortable about this lack of explanation. He touched his bulbous nose. “Myr imese tysjachu ossi. That’s what the Sifgar say: the Myr has a thousand eyes.”

Out from a tussock of berse skittered the curlew. It called again. To whom none could say.

***

When all twelve crewmembers were within, the small but tidy shack was packed. The monk put another peat block on the fire and squatted to slap dough onto an iron slab for cakes. They discussed the season — uncommonly rainy. The Myr was rather flooded.

“How flooded would you say?” one of their pilots asked, a young and skinny fellow who looked half-Sifgar himself.

The monk’s only reply was a frown.

The cakes cooked. He peeled them off and distributed them still burning hot. They bounced in the hands of his dozen guests as he led them in an Ailinic prayer. Then they broke the cakes, releasing moist tendrils of steam, and ate.

“Brother,” said the noble’s guard, “if what you say is true, and we are being followed… then you mustn’t tell our pursuers where we’ve gone.”

“No!” the noble interjected. “This is not his fight! Brother, tell them everything. If you conceal anything then they might kill you.”

The monk nodded. He seemed undisturbed by this plot into which he’d been thrust.

“For that reason…” continued the noble, “I would share no other details of our plan.”

“You needn’t, lord. I know it already. Someone seeks your life, and you mean to cross the swampy Myr to Larensk and bypass the Tharam River.” He looked at them, and though he spoke trenchantly his demeanor was gentle. “I would advise you to abandon this track now. Face your pursuers rather than continue.”

“I thank you for your concern, brother, but we’d rather risk the Sifgar.”

The monk breathed deeply. “I’ve lived here… decades. I’ve traded with the Sifgar, befriended them, learned their languages, met five separate tribes… yet if I pass into their lands, they’ll claim my blood. You would attempt the same?”

“They won’t attack us whilst on the water. That is their tenet, is it not?”

“And if the waters aren’t deep enough for your boat?”

“The statues show depth,” said the half-Sifgar pilot.

“The statues have stood for a millennia. You think their piles haven’t sunk? You think the waterways they mark have not meandered? They are ancient and unreliable.”

“We do not fear the Sifgar’s cruelty,” said the noble’s guard, “nor this swamp. We merely seek justice.”

“This is no mere swamp. This is the Myr, and the Myr makes its own ordinances and the Sifgar follow them. Justice, cruelty… the Myr cares not, it devours equally. I’ve seen it. I grew up in Vichtrink and my sister was kidnapped by slavers and brought here, never to be seen again. I thought as a missionary I might… find her…”

He trailed off. His bulbous nose had turned red.

The noble’s eyes fell. “I am sorry, brother. May God watch over her.”

“Beyond the Myr’s threshold, I know not whom God watches.”

“This fringes on idolatry,” the guard intoned.

“You may find idols stronger than you wagered here. The Myr won’t discriminate between the good and the evil. Its water drinks of ichor and its peat covets bones.”

His head fell in shame of his own prophecy. The sun was going down and the shack was dark. The peat fire snapped and its smoke stank.

The noble made a weak smile. “We thank you, brother. But we should be gone now.”

***

Crickets chanted. The barge drifted away from the dock. The noble looked back at the monk sliding away behind. He wanted to tell the monk that his name was Grigord, and that his father, mother, and sisters had all been assassinated, and that they’d been betrayed by his cousin, and that if he didn’t make it to Larensk by midsummer then that cousin would tell the court his family had died it a boat accident and would rob his title.

But if they were truly being pursued then such knowledge could condemn the monk.

“I shouldn’t share my name,” Grigord called from a distance, “but will you share yours?”

“Brother Walent, lord. I’ll pray for your safe passage.”

They rounded the next bend. The monk and his shack left their sight, but the scent of the peat fire and cakes followed the excursion into the shadows.

***

The Myr has a thousand eyes. Its gaze followed the barge as it jibed deeper and deeper into the marsh. Berse and trees, birds and frogs, dragonflies and catfish. Down a false channel they spied another spruce stump on which sat another cow skull festooned by a chain of tiny, violet flowers. The Sifgar were watching them. The Myr was watching them.

Somewhere behind them the finger of smoke from the monk’s shack twisted up into the sky. “Does it seem closer to us this time?” someone asked.

The Myr has a thousand eyes. The barge went deeper and the waters wended on. Another guidance statue rose from the water, smiling and pointing down another path. The pilots obeyed its mute testimony, for that was its purpose: to show the depth of the water and guide boats as markers through the Myr.

Not all were intact. Some statues were broken, headless or limbless and gesturing with a truncated arm. One was sunken at an angle, so the two pilots dropped anchor and discussed whether the channel was deep enough. An odd pairing these pilots made: a half-Sifgar and a Ganthian. Differing ages, ethnicities, faiths, and even languages. But they’d partnered for over a decade.

Grigord watched them quietly deliberating at the bow when his guardsman came beside him. “You still believe they can navigate this?”

“I do, Piotir. But if we’re pursued, then we’ve no choice.”

A moment later the pilots nodded to one another. They raised sail, weighed their small anchor, manned rudder, journeyed on. The Myr’s thousand eyes followed them.

***

A few days in and they passed their first true Illinach ruin: white marble slabs that had once formed a building’s floor, half buried in silt. A column in toppled pieces lay beside.

“What’s that?” asked a long-bearded soldier named Rebben. He pointed at the slab, for on its lip sat a leather bag.

Everyone knew the tales of the Myr’s secret gold.

Rebben began peeling off his boots. “I could swim to it.”

“No!” shouted the Ganthian pilot. “Bakid! Bakid!”

“I don’t speak Ganthic, old man.”

“He says it’s a trap,” interpreted the half-Sifgar pilot.

“But it’s just there, we’re about to pass it! Fetch that pole, we’ll snag it.”

In one motion the Ganthian pilot drew a pistol and discharged it. The air snapped and birds flushed. Now other weapons came free and the crew flew into alertness.

The noise dispersed. The Myr watched what they would do.

Rebben was not hit. He rose to retaliate but Piotir grabbed his arm and Grigord stepped between. “Hold! I shan’t have…”

Five paces away the Ganthian pilot was reloading.

“Hold! I said hold, man!”

The pilot thumbed another lead ball down the muzzle without patch and took aim.

Grigord barely reached him in time to avert the shot. The pistol bucked again and its bullet traveled somewhere above the shuddering berse.

“I am your captain!” Grigord shouted. “Hear me!”

The Ganthian shouted something back. His partner interpreted: “He says better one should die than all of us.”

“Better we all die than embrace bloody fratricide!”

The crew stared at him, and Grigord realized his face was wet with grief. He covered it with his sleeve and excused himself to the cabin.

***

That night Piotir found him sitting on the deck. He came and sat beside him. The serving girl briefly appeared at the mouth of the cabin with excrement buckets in her hands to empty and clean. Piotir shooed her away.

Grigord was staring at the western sky. “How many days since we left the monk?”

“Five, lord.”

”And the smoke draws nearer.” Grigord pointed at the dark stylus obstructing starlight. “The monk spoke truly. We are followed.” His head fell. “My cousin is a fool to chase us here.”

“Evil men do foolish things, lord. And in their foolishness God exacts his justice.”

“You believe that, Piotir?”

“With my entire soul, my lord.”

Grigord sighed.

“And what do you believe, lord?”

“I watched our crew nearly slay one another today, just as my cousin slew his kin, his and mine. If I can survive this ordeal without doing the same — whether to my cousin or any other — I shall call myself blessed.”

“You are over-clement, lord.”

“Witnessing your parents and siblings be murdered may do that, Piotir.”

A breeze blew. An owl passed before them, noiseless as a shadow.

“God shall have the last word, lord.”

“Aye, Piotir. But methinks the Myr shall have the first.”

***

The sun was bright, but not hot. The air, muggy. Insects droned and sloughs belched. Larches watched over them. The berse was taller in here. An adult could stand upright and still be hidden.

They saw their first two Sifgar that afternoon. Atop a leaning Illinach column thirty feet high they sat: a boy and a girl. Kine lowed somewhere beneath them.

They were each blonde. The girl had blue eyes. Siblings, or amateur lovers. How they got up there none could say. Their gazes followed the intruders.

As they watched the boy stood and pantomimed a bow, nocked and drew an invisible arrow, and fired it at them.

Despite himself, Grigord winced.

The Myr has a thousand eyes. It watched them journey on.

***

The Ganthian looked at the statue.

“Pafva,” he muttered.

When no one heard him his command boiled into outright panic.

“Pafva... Pafva! Pafva!”

“Halt!” screamed the half-Sifgar, running to the stern and kicking the anchor into the water. The rode line writhed as it payed out. Without time to furl sail, two other men rapidly lowered the halyard.

The rode line pulled taut. The barge wumped to a halt.

All hands ran to the bow, armed.

“What is it?!” Piotir demanded.

“‘Fto igal…”

“‘Tis the statue,” interpreted the half-Sifgar.

“What of it?”

The smiling stone figure stood where the thoroughfare forked left and right. It pointed left.

“I said what of it, pilot?”

The Ganthian’s mouth was slack and gibbering. The half-Sifgar kept swallowing and his hands fluttered before him inarticulately. “It… it looks wrong.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means it looks wrong! Too clean, too straight, too… unblemished. It looks wrong.”

The statue grinned. The Myr watched with bated breath.

“It looks wrong.”

***

They spent all day there. The temperature rose. The crew remained mostly silent, though they prayed awhile. The retainer girl emptied more buckets. The pilots sat in conference at the bow, neither eating nor drinking, only watching the statue. Its earnest smile. Its artless gesture.

Rebben furiously sucked on a pipe. “Damn it all!” he finally burst. “If the Sifgar tampered with that one then our guidance might have been compromised for leagues!”

“Peace, Rebben,” Grigord spoke placidly but his face wore pain. “Let them think.”

An hour later the pilots rose and came to Grigord. “We go right.”

“And disdain the statue’s guidance?”

“Yes, lord.”

“You’re certain?”

“No, lord.”

Grigord’s head fell, but he nodded. “God’s will be done.”

Anchor was weighed and sail unfurled. As they passed the statue the girl emptied two more buckets and watched it go.

It looked almost disappointed.

***

The Myr has a thousand eyes. It watched a storm grow in the north. By evening a bruised curtain drew over creation, blotted out the sunset, and pummeled them with rain. They dropped anchor and sheltered in the cabin as the sky broke and made egg-crack splinters of light. The waters raved. The berse stooped. The larch pines writhed in the revelry, black figures against the lightning blows, high priests of the Myr ratifying darkest covenant.

It lessened. Then abated. Tranquil stars emerged. The sky played coy to its own recent paroxysm.

All hands slept in beds of exhaustion. In the wet air hung the scent of smoke. Their pursuers were nearing.

The girl went to the stern with the buckets, dipped them, then headed back toward the cabin.

“You return with only two?” asked Piotir.

She made a squeak, for she hadn’t seen him standing in the shadows. “Aye… aye, Sir.”

“You left the cabin with three.”

She didn’t answer.

He stepped forward. “We’ve been missing buckets. We’ve fewer by the day. I see that one floating yonder.”

“I… I don’t know—”

”Nay, you do. As do I.” He snatched her by the wrist. “All hands! We’ve a traitor!”

***

“A few missing buckets is not evidence, Piotir.”

“She was in the act, lord!”

“It could easily be a mistake.”

“As could your mercy!”

“My mercy is all I have left in this godless place!”

They glared at one another in the cabin’s lamplight. The girl sat in the corner, bound and weeping implacably. Everyone else waited on the deck outside.

“Lord, I’m not asking that you forfeit your humanity…”

“Yes you are, Piotir!”

“You smell the smoke even now! Your cousin is close, and draws ever closer!”

“Aye, by following the statues, the same as us.”

“And what of the tampered one? They too forewent its instruction and turned right?”

“We don’t know that they’ve yet reached that juncture. We don’t know that it’s even my cousin behind us!”

“Use your nose, lord: they are licking our heels! And who else might it be?”

Grigord covered his eyes.

“I am innocent, Lord!” the girl stammered. “I am innocent!”

“Silence, vipress!” Piotir spat.

“We wait until dawn,” said Grigord. “If we sense my cousin is nearer then we shall know they’ve gone right at the tampered statue… and we shall know she is a traitor.”

***

When morrow came the smoke was thicker, closer. No doubt could be sustained.

Grigord knelt at the stern in prayer as the barge slid away from the girl standing on the sedge along the bank. They passed out of sight and the leagues rolled away, yet still they heard her screaming her innocence. Eventually they heard no more.

The Myr has a thousand eyes. Its wind touched the noble’s face. Its waters drank his tears. But what it did with the girl, they would never know.

***

“We spent nigh a full day at the tampered statue. But if they followed her buckets then they lost no time.”

Grigord’s complexion was haggard, but he spoke with a clarity of purpose. Piotir had not seen that expression since they’d entered the Myr. “Aye, lord.”

“How long until they’ll reach us?”

“Less than a day. Hours, perhaps.”

Grigord’s lips pursed. “Was it right, Piotir? Leaving that girl behind?”

“Lord… we should stage an ambush.”

“Folly. The constancy of their smoke means they’ve a whole ship with sizable crew and guns. We need an escape.”

***

They waited till twilight, till the land was shadow and the western sky was the exact color of bog iron. When the breeze settled they could hear the enemy’s voices.

They digressed from the navigable channel and steered the barge into a slough that branched a little ways from the thoroughfare into a stagnant dead-end. A sanctuary of alders drank at the edge and partly screened them from the channel. But only partly.

Opposite the alders to the barge’s other side grew more berse, but another forty yards’ distance beyond that stood more water wherein the pale figure of a guidance statue emerged.

“The channel must wrap around thither,” whispered Grigord. “First we’ll let my cousin pass, then we’ll portage the barge over this spot and reembark by that statue.”

“You’re certain we can lift this?” Piotir asked the pilots.

“Aye, Sir. ‘Tis lighter than it looks once we disassemble the mast and yard.”

They did so, silently undoing the sail and rigging, weighing and removing the anchor and capstan and giving it to the strongest man.

“Is that all?”

“Aye, lord.”

“Can we make it lighter?”

They cut away the tar binding the roof to the cabin and demolished the walls, then laid these aside to be discarded. A curlew fluted in the darkness.

“Now we must wait.”

They didn’t need to wait long. Flickers of yellow shone on the waters from the enemy lanterns aboard their ship.

The noble and his dozen gathered their weapons and sheltered behind the denuded cabin. They watched the ship approach.

Around the corner it stalked like a great leviathan. Far larger than the barge. Men on board shouted, their eyes trained ahead. The masthead’s shadow scrolled slowly above the canopy against the western sky, which was the exact color of bog iron.

“Dus koitsaman,” whispered the Ganthian.

“He says don’t look directly at them.”

The ship’s lights passed between the alders. Its wake communicated outward.

In the passing light Grigord’s face was set like flint. His lips murmured Credic prayers. His eyes bargained with unseen gods.

The enemy ship passed on. Its lights diminished.

The barge crew breathed again.

“Now,” whispered Grigord. “Portage, posthaste!”

They dipped into the water and their boots squelched into silt. They beat their way into the berse and took hold of the mooring line on either side and hauled the barge like poachers absconding with a slain whale.

“Heave!” whispered Piotir. “Heave!”

The darkness was chilling. Not a star winked above.

“Heave!”

Their boots sank deeply into the peat, and when they left the holes filled with stinking water. The barge slid forward. The crew gasped and opened their burning hands to the cool air.

“No time!” Grigord hissed, barely a ghost in the darkness. “No time! Press on!”

The long-bearded soldier named Rebben cursed and reached for the mooring line again, then stopped. “I see light.”

A glow from the thoroughfare. Grigord’s cousin had turned around and was coming back.

“Haste!” Piotir said a little more loudly. “Haste!”

They pulled and groaned again.

“Come on… come on…”

“Haul, men!” Girgord hissed. He looked back at the enemy ship. It had reached the alders and the men on board were pointing and shouting. “Haul!” the noble cried, abandoning silence. “Haul! Your lives depend upon it!”

The barge rolled forward again and the berse flattened before and behind it.

The enemy ship thumped against the silt. Ropes fell from its sides and men were descending.

“I have you now!” screamed someone on the ship’s deck. “God can’t save you from me, Grigord!”

“Halfway there!” the noble cried. “Haul! Haul!”

Piotir made to pull again but the berse grew thicker here and bent into his face. In exasperation he drew his sword and hacked once, then twice…

Three feet ahead of him a boy rose from the berse and looked straight at Piotir. The boy drew back an arrow and fired.

Piotir felt the bolt slice his cheek through to his teeth. He gasped, too stunned to scream. His tongue ran over the wound and felt warm blood and cold air through the opening in his cheek.

The Sifgar had been waiting for them. For both crews.

Ungodly screams rose up as the stalks erupted. One of the noble’s men looked up from the mooring line and beheld the studded club just before it cleaved his skull. Another pulled his pistol free and fired at the charging shadow and in the ignition’s light saw a mustached Sifgar grimace as the bullet punched through his chest in a pink mist. A third crewmember saw an attacker and raised his arms but the Sifgar’s ax lodged in his forearm and he could see the splintered stick that was his ulna and the ax ripped free and fell again. Guns hissed and clapped and the traitorous cousin’s crew was also being butchered and now the Sifgar were clambering up the ship itself and the cousin was overrun.

Grigord himself leaped onto the barge’s deck and screamed for support but who could hear or see him? His sword was out and as one Sifgar charged he deftly inserted the point just above the clavicle and flicked open all the precious tubes and branches therein which hissed and squealed. Two more attacked but Grigord’s swordpoint found armpit and inner thigh and he shouted again for support but then came a fourth and Grigord slew him too before realizing he’d slain one of his own men in the dark. He wailed until a club found his head.

The Ganthian pilot knelt in the berse gathering wet ropes in his lap that were his entrails until he was found and hewn over and over like a stump. The long-bearded Rebben fought valiantly but his left leg kept quivering and his left foot was sickly warm from the blood pooling in his boot and his body was cold and his vision disintegrated and he died quite slowly. The half-Sifgar made it to the water and swam. Piotir cried to his companions but he’d taken a blow to his head and his words were muddied and sounded as if his tongue had grown too large and he could feel blood running from both ears and could taste it likewise. His grip turned slippery.

The western sky changed from bog iron to old blood.

***

Grigord woke to gray sunlight. He lay supine on the barge where he’d fallen. His sword, belt, and boots were gone. A horde of flies droned all around. He tried to lift his head but his neck and skull burned terribly. Beside him lay the three Sifgar he’d slain. And his one crewmember — a man whose family he knew in Larensk, a man of loyalty and honor who’d heard Grigord’s shout and come to his aid in the night.

Lying on that wooden altar beneath the near and overcast sky, Grigord cried like a babe.

Through his tears saw children. Children of the Sifgar picking among the human carrion. One had a chert knife to cut free buttons — already she’d collected a fistful. Another child wore someone’s hat but it kept falling over his eyes. A third was pulling a man’s sock up his arm like a sleeve. More were trying to climb on the ship still stuck in the slough. A hawk perched high on the yard. Aurochs lowed somewhere nearby, scarcely audible above the flies.

Grigord cried more. A small child regarded him briefly but was pulled away.

When he’d marshaled the strength to turn his head he looked into the eyes of an older boy, evidently the cowherd to the nearby cattle. The fellow was on wooden stilts three feet off the ground and his lips were puckered around the stem of Rebben’s unlit pipe.

Noble and cowherd stared at one another. “Please…” said Grigord. He felt the horrors of their journey, but his head injury likewise contributed to his unstable emotions.

The cowherd made a motion with his head for Grigord to follow.

Grigord unpeeled himself from the deck, crawled, then shambled after him.

***

Down narrow cowpaths through the stalks they trudged, following the smell of peat fires into a village. Huts of thatch and clay with dug out floors and woven doors. Empty of villagers, for they’d all gone to a wicker-fenced arena beside the longhouse at the village’s center. The cowherd boy led Grigord there, then deftly dismounted and carried his stilts away.

Still unnoticed, Grigord looked over the the crowd and into the muddy arena. There stood the survivors: both from the barge and the ship, bloodied and haggard, bound with hemp cord. They each bore wooden weapons.

Opposite them stood armed warriors of the Sifgar, drunk and howling for more blood.

“Piotir! Men!” Grigord cried.

The Sifgars standing nearby jumped and turned, then parted and allowed Grigord to stagger to the fence.

“Lord! Lord! Run, lord!” Piotir wailed though his pronunciation was damaged. Next to him stood the half-Sifgar pilot, and further down stood Grigord’s cousin.

Grigord tried to clamber over the fence and fell in the mud.

Above the din a woman keened.

All fell to silence.

Grigord was still in the mud as the priestess walked up and cast her shadow over him. She wore a linen robe adorned with dyes of yellow and blue and on her crown was a hawk’s skull.

Despite this, she didn’t look Sifgar at all.

“You are their king?” she asked in his native tongue.

“No, their lord.”

“Not anymore.”

She was turning away when Grigord recognized the bulbous nose. “Brother Walent’s sister!”

She stopped.

“You are Walent’s sister! He’s looking for you! He—”

She screamed again until the veins stood on her forehead, then finished and breathed. “You are wrong. I am no longer she.”

“You are she! Which means you know the Creed, or once did! In God’s name, have mercy on my men!”

“This is trial by combat — the only mercy.”

“You condemn the innocent!”

“Nay, the Myr condemns them. Their innocence is moot.”

Grigord was weeping, but his eyes caught fire. “Injustice!”

“So you say.”

“Cruelty! Are you woman or craven?”

“Who brought cruelty here?!” the priestess screamed. “You? I? The Sifgar? God?” Her hands made claws and froth touched her lips. “Or does it grow in the berse? Or do flies spread it?”

She walked to Grigord and took him by the hair.

“You dare invoke the name of justice… each bird and beast knows the rules of life and death. Do you not?”

Grigord’s eyes closed as she retched up a wad of phlegm and spat it in his face.

“Yet you call me a craven? You child. Lo, here is the only justice. The blood of your men belongs to the Myr.”

She released him, and again turned to leave.

His eyes were still shut when he replied: “And if I give my blood for theirs?”

“No, lord!” Piotir cried.

“There are three from your crew,” she scoffed, “but only one of you.”

“My blood is willing. ‘Tis worth more. And I ask for not only those three. I ask for all of them.”

Piotir moaned. The enemy crew looked at Grigord in stupefaction.

“Those others,” said the priestess, “they chased you here, seeking your death.”

“You yourself said innocence was moot. As your brother told me, the Myr devours equally. If it will not discriminate, then why should I?”

She stared down at him.

“I ask for only one condition: release my crew first, then wait two full moons before releasing the others”

She began to nod slowly. “So be it. Your blood for theirs.”

“I thank you.”

“Do not thank me. Your act avails naught. You shall die. They shall leave. The Myr shall find more blood to drink.”

“Maybe so, but it won’t drink theirs. Only mine.”

***

Northwesterly winds blew gently, guiding their borrowed crafts out of the Myr. Three alone from the noble’s crew remained. Not a word had they to share amongst themselves.

Piotir looked back only once at that recumbent willow where the hand of the wind passed through the withies. There hung his lord Grigord by his feet. His skin was white as a marble statue. His throat was opened from ear to ear. His wrists were likewise, as were each fingertip. Blood ran dark. White sinew showed beneath. The swirling waters swallowed every black drop.

But his face… on his face was a peace Piotir had not seen since before his family’s death. Not of victory, but fulfillment.

Piotir lowered painfully to his knees and put his forehead to the deck. Whom had his lord’s death justified: the Myr, or God?

The Myr has a thousand eyes. It watched the intruders go.

A curlew called.

***

If you enjoyed this story, you might also like:

Or, if you’re in the mood for something different, try:

This story is part of a collection published in my debut book, The Wolf-Man’s Trail & Other Stories:

Bookstore