XIX - Arrival in Fenwick
The cold woke her up from her nightmare.
Sybil’s eyes came open slowly, lethargically. With great effort, she sat up in her bedroll and looked around. They had camped in the crumbled ruins of an old, forgotten keep, with the only part of the structure remaining being a handful of layered stones that served as the vestige of two intersecting walls. Above them the sky was still dark, telling her that daylight was still a while off. Vlad sat at the nearby fire, trying to warm himself against the worsening winter cold. The shadows produced by the fire bounced off of the nearby walls, which were too low and ruinous to capture the majority of the heat; even lying in the proximity of the blaze, Sybil was still quite cold and she was certain that her teacher was as well. They had come across a small village a number of days prior where Vlad had exchanged several of his elixirs for some garments of fur and wool, which he wore under his armor and which Sybil had used to replace the clothing damaged by Vivienne Frost, but even this much-appreciated winter apparel could only keep the chill from reaching their blood and their bones for so long.
When he noticed that she was awake, Vlad looked at her and smiled. “Ah, Night Owl. I see you are living up to your sobriquet as you so often do.”
“I had another nightmare,” she said plainly.
“Ah,” he said again. There was a brief pause, during which Sybil studied the healing wound along Vlad’s face. Already it was proving that it was going to leave a rather deep scar. “Would you care to discuss it?”
She hesitated as she considered what details she wanted to reveal, if any. “My father and I were hunting. I fired my crossbow at a hare, and at first it looked as though I had actually hit it, but when we approached the carcass it turned into Dr. Frost, lying there, dead. I tried to pull my quarrel from her chest, but when I did, she suddenly came back to life as the vampyre Vivienne. Sh… it attacked me, and when my father tried to protect me, it ripped out his throat.” She paused, only slightly surprised that she had gone over the nightmare in that much detail. “The vampyre turned back to face me as my father lay dying. That was when I woke up.”
Vlad remained silent for some time, considering this. “I see,” he eventually said. “Well, I suppose you have had worse, no?”
“I suppose,” Sybil said. She felt herself beginning to shiver, so she raised her knees and wrapped her arms around them in an attempt to fight off the cold. “You know, Mr. Albescu, I cannot help but notice that, while you so often call me Night Owl, you are the one that I rarely see sleep.”
Vlad smiled at this. “Believe me, Night Owl, I acquire my slumber wherever and whenever I can find it. For example, sometimes that will be in short stints while on the road, when I allow you to take the reins.”
She frowned at this. “I hope you did not do as much when you were first teaching me. If things had gone poorly, you would not have been awake to prevent it.”
“Ah, but things did not go poorly, did they?” he said. His warm smile temporarily turned into a playful grin.“Worry not, my apprentice. I had confidence in your steering abilities from the very beginning, even if you yet did not.” He paused. “In any event, if sleep now eludes us both, should we not get on our way?”
“At this hour?” Sybil asked, surprised. “It is still some time before daybreak yet.”
“Indeed,” Vlad said, “but the earlier we travel, the faster we will arrive in Fenwick, no? At our current pace, I say we should only need to camp one more time before we reach our destination.”
This filled Sybil with a new vigor. Her mind flashed to images of sleeping in a real, warm bed instead of on her bedroll in front of a fire for the first time in over a month. “Well, alright, then. I suppose I was not likely to get any more sleep before sunrise anyway.”
“Excellent,” Vlad said, rising to his feet. “Then I shall rouse Elpis and we can be on our way. I predict that we should arrive in the village tomorrow morning as long as we keep a strong pace and minimize any stops.” He looked up at the looming sky, which was bright with a nearly full moon. “We’d best make haste, though. The skies may remain clear now, but there is no telling what they will hold for us when we reach Fenwick. Winter quickly approaches, my apprentice, and it will not wait for us to be safe and warm within the village’s sturdy walls before it chooses to arrive.”
___
As it would turn out, Vlad was correct about both of his predictions.
He had accurately foretold that they would reach Fenwick by the next morning. They travelled at a steady pace for most of that day, spent a short night beneath the stars, and broke their camp not long before the following sunrise. It was only a few hours after dawn that the village loomed ahead of them, appearing nestled in the valley of a pair of hills which was sparse of much vegetation outside of a handful of sporadic trees and a wide field of green grass—or at least it would have been green, were it not for the sheet of white snow which covered most of the ground, leaving only handfuls of verdant patches along its ivory tapestry.
Because the second thing that Vlad had accurately predicted was the changing of the weather.
Snow had started to fall in the late afternoon on the night before they arrived at Fenwick. It brought with it a fresh chill that made that night’s sleep a living misery; Sybil spent many restless hours shivering near the ineffective fire, curled up as tightly as she could get in her bedroll, desperately trying to fend off the winter cold. If she had gotten a collective three hours’ worth of sleep that night, she would have been surprised. Vlad, she was certain, had slept even less, if he had slept at all. The only one of them to have found any sort of restfulness was Elpis, who seemed largely unaffected by the rapidly deteriorating weather.
The snow fell until late into the night, and even when it finally came to a stop, the cold did not leave with it as it had arrived. When she rose from her bedroll, groggy and with a dull throb in her head, Sybil looked around to see the thin curtain of white that now covered the valley all around their camp. She knew that this first snowfall was but a meager flurry when compared to the formidable blizzards that the winter ahead surely had in store, and she hoped dearly that she and Vlad would be able to spend at least a handful of weeks in Fenwick so that they could rest from their long, exhausting travel, and prepare for the harsh conditions that the future would hand to them. Sybil highly doubted that Vlad would allow them to wait until spring, but she would take as much time shielded from the elements as she could get.
The coach made its way along the faded dirt road, now dusted with white, that led through the valley toward Fenwick. The small, nameless tributary of the Ardventi River that Vlad had mentioned before ran through the valley. They had followed this river closely for some time before coming upon the road, which led them on a more direct path toward Fenwick than the winding river would have. Sometimes the road had brought them up close to the river’s banks, but other times the channel was so far away that they could no longer see it. Now it was forty or fifty meters to their left; close enough to be seen, but not close enough to be a significant presence.
As they approached Fenwick, Sybil got a better view of the tall wooden stockade which surrounded the village. Each of its thick lengths of timber, divided into many palisades, ended in a sharp point that sought to deter anybody that may wish to climb over it. The stockade reassembled a row of sturdy trees in a forest heavy with secrets that it intended to keep protected from any prying eyes. Even from more than half a mile away, Sybil found herself in awe of the mighty wall—it was taller than any manmade thing that she had ever seen in her life. Her own village had never had such fortifications, and besides the aged trees of the forest, which dwarfed even this mighty wall, nothing she had ever seen had been nearly as imposing as the stockade that she knew she would soon be passing through.
Their path took them down a slight hill, at the bottom of which rested the village. This discrepancy between their elevation and that of their destination allowed Sybil to see some of the land beyond Fenwick. Nestled between the village and the hills that sheltered it was a large forest that reminded Sybil of home. Its verdure seemed to extend well up into those rolling hills, creating a lush, almost mountainous woodland that, while normally viridescent with its vibrant plantlife, was now marked by that same distinct sprinkling of white that seemed to spread all across this vast, rugged valley. The river ran through the valley and appeared to cut through Fenwick, before passing behind the village and into the forest beyond. How much farther it went after this, she could not tell; it was lost amongst the trees and distance of the far off weald.
Sybil looked to the side of the road, where she saw three distinct lumps lying in the grass, covered in the white curtain that had fallen across the land. At first she thought them to be a rare collection of shrubbery in this vast, open space, but upon further inspection, she recognized them for what they actually were: three human corpses. Through gaps in the snow she could see their blue, stiff skin, as well as the gouges in their flesh that told her they had been snacked upon by animals—perhaps crows or jackals, or perhaps something else. She also could not tell what had caused them all to collapse there in the grass together, lying in what appeared to be the remains of their scattered campsite. Maybe Plague had taken them, or perhaps they had been slain by bandits while on the road. Either way, their demise coming when they were so agonizingly close to the nearby village was tragic; Sybil disliked the thought of what went through their minds as their lives came to an end, knowing that they had almost made it to their salvation.
Sybil glanced at Vlad. He did not appear to notice the corpses lying buried in the snow, and she did not point them out to him.
A frigid breeze passed over them, sending a chill running through Sybil’s body. She began to shiver, prompting Vlad to glance over at her. “Go on and retreat into the coach if you feel so inclined, Night Owl. Its shelter may not bring you much warmth, but it will at least protect you from the wind. There is hardly a need for both of us to endure this worsening cold.”
“It’s alright, Mr. Albescu,” Sybil said, looking ahead toward the ever-approaching village. “I should be able to hold out just fine until Fenwick. It’s not much farther now.”
“It may be true that our journey to the village might be coming to an end,” he said, “but our passing into the village is a different matter entirely. It may be some time before we are actually allowed within Fenwick’s walls.”
Sybil glanced at her companion. “Why is that?”
“We are almost certainly going to be held at the village gate before being allowed inside,” he explained. “Fenwick takes great precaution to prevent Plague from crossing beyond its borders. The disease is practically nonexistent within the village, but that comes with a price for anybody seeking entry: it is very likely that we will be detained at the gate for at least an hour to ensure that we are not exhibiting any symptoms of the Plague. If the guards feel so inclined, they could keep us there for as much as an entire day.”
Sybil frowned. “An entire day? And what if your business in Fenwick is urgent?”
“It best not be so urgent that you cannot spare the time needed to gain entry.”
“And what if one displays symptoms of illness that appear to be Plague-like in nature, but are belonging to an entirely different ailment?”
“Then those individuals can return when they have recovered,” Vlad said, “and hope that they have not come a long way.”
Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!
Sybil’s frown persisted, and Vlad could see that his words had only furthered her concern. He smiled at her before going on. “Worry not, Night Owl. We may have to wait, but we shall not be turned away. I am a familiar face in this village, and the village guard knows that I have never arrived here with so much as a sore throat.”
Sybil thought about the prospect of being turned away and pouted slightly, more annoyed by that prospect than actually fearful of it. “We’d best hope that this weather does not cause one of us to develop a runny nose ere we make it to the gate.”
“That would be most unfortunate,” he agreed, still smiling. “But you needn’t worry. I just wanted to extend you a warning, is all. If my past experiences in Fenwick are anything to go by, I would confidently wager all of the silver pieces in my purse that we will be spending quite some time outside of the village gate.”
As it would turn out, this new prediction, unlike Vlad’s previous ones, would shortly be proven wrong.
The gate that he was so certain would be occupied by heavily scrutinizing eyes lay open and unguarded. Sybil could see through the aperture into the space beyond, to where the dirt road leading into Fenwick transitioned into the cobblestone street inside. Through the limited opening she saw stone buildings lining either side of the street, tightly packed together in order to maximize the space therein. Even beyond the gate, there were no scrutinizers to be seen.
Vlad brought their coach to a stop. He looked at the open gate and frowned.
“I suppose it’s a good thing you didn’t actually wager those silver pieces of yours,” Sybil said.
Vlad remained silent for a few lengthy moments as he contemplated the abandoned gate. “Odd,” he said with a scratch of his bearded chin. “Very odd indeed. In all of my many journeys to Fenwick, not once have I arrived to an open gate without a single soul to greet me. I know the number of guards in Fenwick is less than they would like, but coverage of the front gate has always taken priority. This village is notoriously strict in their policies. The fact that the gate is unguarded is certainly cause for concern.”
They sat in silence for several moments, contemplating the scene before them. Then Sybil turned to look at her companion. “So what should we do, then? Certainly we cannot be detained at the gate if there is nobody at the gate to detain us.”
“Well, seeing as neither of us show any symptoms of Plague, I am sure the dutiful guards of Fenwick will forgive us for breaking their stringent procedure.” He looked at Sybil while he spoke, then returned his attention to the lingering gate. “And besides, they may even need our assistance inside. Something here is certainly amiss. I can think of no reason they’d leave the gate unguarded in such a way unless the guards were called away on some urgent matter.”
“But what could that urgent matter be?”
“There is only one way for us to find out, is there not?”
Sybil answered him with a nod, and Vlad urged Elpis forward. She lazily carried the coach through the gate and into the town beyond. Once inside, Sybil got a better view of that same densely-packed street that she had only gotten a glimpse of before. It appeared to stretch on as the resident main street through the heart of the village, branching off into several smaller streets and alleys as it went.
“I must admit that this village looks very much like a larger version of my own,” Sybil said. “My village doesn’t have a gate, but besides that, the resemblance is uncanny. It makes me wonder how many more like it exist out there in the vast world.”
“Certainly more than anybody can count,” Vlad said. “I myself have been to more than I can remember on my journeys throughout the Dominion.”
As they went along, Sybil quickly noticed that the street remained strangely empty, devoid of any of the bustle and life that she would have expected at that time of morning. Nobody shuffled through town in the midst of their morning routine, nor did they enter any shops or businesses with the intent to complete their day’s errands. The eerie stillness of it all made her immensely uncomfortable.
“Where is everybody?” she asked.
“An excellent question,” Vlad said. “You would certainly expect folk to be up and about by now, but the village appears to be as lifeless as if it were the dead of night.” He frowned. “This day grows more and more curious by the minute.”
As they went on, the sound of a gathered crowd caught their ears. They both looked in the direction of the new commotion, which sounded to be coming from down a nearby street.
Vlad looked at Sybil. “I think we may have just found our answer.”
He willed Elpis in the direction of the growing sound. They followed this sidestreet as the chatter grew louder. Eventually they came upon an alleyway that seemed to be the source of the commotion, at the mouth of which Vlad brought Elpis to a stop and looked at his companion. “I say we go by foot from here. It will do us no good to take our coach down such a tight avenue if there is a large crowd of people already crammed inside of it.”
Sybil nodded her agreement, and the two of them disembarked from their transport. She squared up next to her mentor and together they made their way down the alley, where they soon saw the gathered crowd. It quickly became clear that this was where most of the villagers, as well as the village guards, had chosen to congregate. The murmur grew as they approached and stepped into the crowd, and through the chatter, Sybil managed to pick up a handful of sentences that were more than a little concerning.
“What could be doing this?” A man said. “A wild dog?”
His companion sounded completely unconvinced. “There is not a dog in the world, let alone in this village, that could have done that.”
“This is the fourth time this has happened!” somebody else said. “What are the guards going to do about this?”
“The same thing they did the last three times: remove the bodies, wash away the blood, and little else.”
“I was just drinkin’ with ’em last night,” an old man said, his voice sounding as though he had never actually stopped imbibing from the night before. “They seemed so happy, full of life. Who could have done this to such a lovely couple as they?”
Vlad gently pushed his way through the crowd, leading the way for Sybil to come through behind him. When he finally reached the front, he came to an abrupt stop before her, not leaving her enough space to get through. Sybil, determined to find out what the fuss was about and unable to see over the bodies of the taller people all around her, forced her way between Vlad’s and another man’s shoulders so she could square up next to her companion and see what had brought him to an unexpected halt. Standing behind a wooden barricade were several guards, many of which likely came from the front gate, all of them either controlling the crowd or investigating the scene that they were intent on separating from the public.
A scene that, Sybil knew immediately, would readily join her growing pantheon of nightmares.
The first thing she noticed was all of the red. It was painted all over the snow and stained the exposed patches of cobblestone beneath the uneven layer of white; dark, crimson red that was approaching brown with age. Two mangled forms lay in the center of all that vermillion, and from what she could tell, they had once been very much alive—as well as very much human. Their limbs were all gone, their heads torn off with them; all that remained were the vaguely rectangular stumps of torsos, which had been torn open and gutted, their entrails strewn all about the place. Some of those innards had huge gouges torn out of them by what looked to be massive teeth and claws; others were completely severed, their other halves taken to places unknown. It all reminded Sybil of watching her father dressing the animals he had slain—a sight she thought she had gotten used to over her many years of assisting him with the grizzly act. Looking at this similar scene now brought her back to that very first time, where she had nearly vomited in the grass the very moment he had shoved his knife into the carcass’s accepting stomach.
If Vlad had noticed her gazing upon the carnage, he did not attempt to block her view of it. Part of her wished that he had.
“Alright, everybody. It is time to move along, by order of the Fenwick Guard.”
Sybil and Vlad, as well as the rest of the chattering crowd, turned in the direction of the sudden, booming voice. A man walked through the morning gloom down the length of the alleyway, flanked on either side by another guard. He wore shining plate armor and a flowing red cloak that matched the color of his companions’ lesser capes. He carried a longsword at his hip, on which he rested his left hand. His dirty blonde hair was pulled back into a thick mane that stopped halfway down the length of his neck. The man’s tired eyes made Sybil think he was close in age to Vlad, if not a few years younger, but he held an appearance of relative youth that could very well have been a trick of his strong, clean-shaven jawline. A tiny gouge of a scar on his chin indicated where he had once been stabbed by something small and sharp—perhaps a dagger, or even a shard of glass. “Please vacate the area and continue on with your day. Anybody who remains here at the expiration of five minutes will be considered an opponent of justice and will be promptly arrested.”
“What are you and your men planning on doing about this, Sir Godwin?” a villager said.
“We cannot continue to live like this,” added another voice. “My family and I will not continue to live in fear while people are being torn apart in the streets!”
“You continue to do nothing as the citizens of this village pay for your incompetence in blood!”
The crowd began to come alive with a fresh, angry murmur, one that may have become unstoppable in its fervor were it not quickly silenced by Godwin’s loud, imposing voice. “Silence! You have been issued a single warning, and that is all you shall receive. You may think our gaol too small to accommodate all of you, but believe me when I say that you do not wish to test our creativity when it comes to the matter of maintaining public order. Now, you will disburse at once so that we can conduct our proper investigation, or you will all be taken away in irons. Am I understood?”
The crowd remained silent for a long stretch of time, during which nobody moved. Sybil half-expected their angry chatter to reignite, and in fact was fully prepared for it to do so, but instead they set about doing as they were told. They slowly began to disburse, one by one, until the sea of agitated bodies was gone, leaving behind only the two most agitated ones in their place beyond the wooden barrier.
When the crowd was sufficiently reduced, Vlad took an unexpected step toward Godwin, prompting Sybil to follow after him. He raised a hand in greeting and smiled at the angry knight. “It has been a long time, Sir Godwin,” he said. “You’re as eager to wave around that iron fist of yours as ever, I see.”
Godwin looked at Vlad. When recognition dawned on him, his eyes narrowed. “And you are looking far older than ever, Vlad Albescu. Time has clearly not been kind to you.”
“On the contrary, you look quite well,” Vlad said. He turned his gaze on the two mutilated corpses lying on the other side of the barrier. “A shame that I cannot say the same for our unfortunate friends yonder.”
“They were no friends of yours, Plague doctor,” Godwin said. “And you shall leave such matters to us. My warning goes for anybody who would obstruct our investigation—which includes purveyors of false cures, or any other such elixirs, as you might call them.”
“Worry not, Sir,” Vlad said, the smile not leaving his face. “We have no intention of hindering you in your duties. We were simply concerned when, upon arriving in Fenwick, we found not a soul near the gate to greet us. I suppose our question as to where the absent guards were has been answered, but that answer has only opened the door for so many more questions.”
“Questions that are no concern of yours.” Godwin’s sneer persisted, his eyes refusing to blink. “If you are here on business with Avice, as I assume you are, then I suggest that you get it dealt with quickly and be gone from Fenwick with all haste—ere nightfall, if at all possible.”
“Some sage advice,” Vlad said cordially, “especially considering how dangerous these streets appear to be after dark presently. Did I not overhear that this is the fourth attack of this nature recently?”
“We are investigating these attacks with absolute prudence, diligence, and efficiency, I can assure you.”
“Something I do not doubt in the slightest.”
Godwin approached the barrier and pushed it aside, preparing to step beyond it. “Now, as you can see that we are quite busy here, I would like to remind you of the strict time limit that I earlier imposed. Should you remain here at the expiration of those five minutes—an expiration which approaches with haste—you will find me to be far less cordial than I am presently.”
“Understood, Sir Godwin,” Vlad said as he turned to walk away. “Best of luck to you, then.”
The knight did not respond. Vlad led the way back up the alley; it was not until they were out of earshot of the guards that Sybil finally spoke. “I must say, I do not think that man much cares for you, Mr. Albescu.”
“I would have to agree with you, Night Owl.” He glanced at her and smiled as they walked. “And I am happy to see that he has not changed his ways. Visits to Fenwick would not be the same without his warm welcome.”
Sybil’s mind returned to the scene behind them, and the burning question that she had been so eager to voice. “What could have done that back there?” she asked. “A nosferatu, perhaps?”
Vlad shook his head. “Unlikely. The lack of Plague in this town does not make it an agreeable place for nosferatu to hunt. And beyond that, they never leave such a mess behind. Those corpses were mutilated far beyond the typical nature of a strigoi. No, the carnage we just witnessed is more akin to a lycanthrope attack.”
She frowned at this. “Lycanthrope?”
“You may know them by a different moniker.” The Plague doctor stopped walking and met her gaze now, the smile gone from his face. In fact, he was more serious now than she had seen him in days; the ice in his eyes rivaled the winter chill that swirled in the air all about them, and was just as liable to set her body to shivering. “Tell me, Night Owl, are you familiar with the term ‘werewolf’?”
