Barbarian's Adventure in a Fantasy World-Chapter 283: The Barbarian King (4)

Something squeezed through a narrow seam, slipped its cage, and crept out of the prison that had held it fast. The moment its feet touched the world, it shivered with delight.

Look, it thought. Look well, world. Your master has returned.

It set a single foot on the earth, and the earth began to rot. Pleased with the stain it left behind, it moved forward. Something dreadful started to show itself to the world.

***

Ketal and Bayern shared a bottle and traded light jokes. The talk moved easily, like a river sliding past round stones. Both were kings among barbarians, and both, in their own sharp ways, were deeply reasonable men. Both had been battered by the stupidity of their people. With so many points of sympathy, the gap between them closed quickly.

“Let us move to the real matter,” Bayern said at last.

His eyes settled. The man who had shaken while he pulled thorns from his memory was gone. In his place stood the master of the North, the King of the barbarians.

“You do not want my throne,” he said. “You do not even look as if you care for barbarians. The North is not your home. Why did you come here?”

Ketal weighed his answer. On the surface, he had come to oppose the tide of demons. He doubted Bayern would be satisfied with only that.

“I received word that something dangerous has taken root here,” he said.

“You mean the demons?” Bayern asked him.

“No. I am speaking of something else entirely.”

Bayern’s brow jumped. “You mean things from the Demon Realm.”

The fact that creatures from the Demon Realms were slipping into the world was already widely known. If the threat was not demons, then there was only one other bucket that could hold it. Ketal nodded once.

“Is this information from the gods?” Bayern asked him.

“Something like that,” Ketal answered.

He could not explain the Quests themselves, so he gave a simple truth and let it stand. Bayern clicked his tongue in annoyance.

The gods watched the Mortal Realm and sent guidance when needed. A land that rejected the words of a god had trouble getting news that mattered. Bayern knew that, which was why he had tried to build ties with the churches despite the tribes’ hatred for priests. Each time he climbed one handhold up that wall, barbarians had shown up to kick his fingers until he fell.

“I tried to build a line for exactly this kind of day,” Bayern said with a weary sigh, “but my people pushed back as if I were strangling them. They even block what I do for the sake of the North. There are times when they are worse than useless.”

“Even so,” he added, softening, “you came to tell me. That is fortunate. What details can you share?”

“That is all I was given,” Ketal said. “There is something here.”

Bayern accepted the limit with a small nod. “So you came to me to turn a rumor into a map.”

“Is there any place that troubles you?” Ketal asked him. “Any report of something strange? Any pattern out of shape?”

The Quest window had warned Ketal that the danger would demand his hands personally. It had not said such a thing when a nation had been swept away by Nano, or when the City of Merfolk had fallen, so this was worse than either. If something at that scale had reached the North, there would be waves even if the stone itself lay hidden.

“No word,” Bayern said. “Where the demons push, there is always fighting, but nothing else has reached me.”

“What about the demon front?” Ketal asked him

“I do not know,” Bayern said with a tight shrug. “They are fighting as they always do.”

Barbarians did not feel the need for regular reports. Bayern had gathered the saner ones and turned them into messengers of a sort, but the net had wide holes. He had at least trained them to send word when something broke, yet no word had come.

Ketal stroked his chin. “I see.”

“I will try to dig for whatever I can,” Bayern said. “Now that I know there is a problem, I will pull the line tight.”

“Good,” Ketal said.

The North spread wide. The best move was to hold in the King’s city and wait for a thread to follow. Ketal stayed while Bayern’s runners went out.

In the meantime, Bayern and Ketal sparred. Axes met with a clean, steel voice. They held back from the level that had split the sky, but neither sleepwalked through it. Bayern treated every exchange as if a lesson waited behind it.

“I lost,” Bayern said at the end of one such bout.

It was not only that day, but it had been every day. For three straight days, he had faced Ketal a dozen times and had not taken a single round.

“This could break a man’s heart,” he said with a crooked smile.

“You are allowed to be proud,” Ketal said as he set his axe at his hip. “You are strong enough that there are not many like you, even in the White Snowfield.”

“So there are a few,” Bayern said, half laughing at his own disbelief.

There were barbarians of his level in that place, and not just one. It was absurd and yet fit, given the neighbors they lived beside. If one shared a border with a bear that walked like a falling mountain, one would build a body that could say no.

“I assume the barbarian I met was one of them,” Bayern said.

“If he is the man I am thinking of, then yes,” Ketal answered.

Bayern’s face grew intent. “You have fought me. You did not use your full strength, but you have seen enough to judge. Based on what you know, if I faced the bear again as I am now, how would it end?”

Ketal thought about it with care. The White Bear that made the ground tremble with each step was not a metaphor. It is a ruler. This was not a question to answer lightly.

“You are strong,” Ketal finally said. “Very strong.”

Measured against the men of the world outside the White Snowfield, Bayern sat near the top. Ketal believed he could even beat the High Elf Queen Karin if the situation was right.

“However, the bear is also strong,” Ketal finished.

“You mean I would not win...,” Bayern said.

“I cannot be certain until I see it with my own eyes,” Ketal answered. “You did not show me everything.”

In Ketal’s head, the board favored the bear. Bayern bared his teeth in a grin.

“That is enough,” he said. “I have a clear goal again.”

Days went by. One week turned over, then another half, but nothing happened.

“Still no word?” Ketal asked Bayern.

“Nothing,” Bayern said, frowning. “I sent for reports. None have returned. Also, there is one more thing that’s weird about it.”

“What is it?”

“There is no message from the battle line where we face the demons.”

Barbarians did not send a letter every few days to say they were still alive, but the problem was the span. There had been no word for more than two weeks. Silence could be good news, but this silence had lasted too long. No front that fierce ran quiet for that many days. Either everything was perfect, or something had gone so wrong that no one could speak. In the present moment, the second was more likely.

“We need to go and see for ourselves,” Bayern said.

“Let me see a map,” Ketal said.

Bayern brought one, spread it on the table, and set a finger on the coast.

“The demons are invading from here.”

“From the sea,” Ketal said.

The enemy was using the ocean as a road and pushing inland. Territories had already fallen. A ragged line ran across the paper where the fighting had thickened.

“The front is wide,” Bayern said. “That makes mistakes more likely.”

Barbarians were strong and straightforward, which often meant they were easy to bait. A simple trap could tear a hole in an army that did not plan more than one step ahead.

“No word can mean two things,” Bayern said. “Either there is no problem at all, or a problem has silenced them.”

“At this point, the second seems more likely,” Ketal said.

Bayern’s eyes narrowed. “Then we go.”

“Can I come?” Ketal asked him.

“You can,” Bayern said. “We do not need you, though. If there is trouble, I will return and bring the barbarians myself.”

“No,” Ketal said, shaking his head. “I need to go.”

Bayern’s face shifted from puzzlement to something sharper. “You think there is a specific danger.”

“It feels that way,” Ketal said.

“Understood,” Bayern replied. “We leave at once.”

The Barbarian King moved without wasted motion. Ketal stood a little longer over the map, tracing the edge of the sea with his eyes.

The ocean that carried the demons touched the White Snowfield. He stared at the shape where the two met and let the memory unfold.

What was there again? Ketal wondered. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

His expression shifted as memory struck, and in that instant, he recognized the truth. He remembered which monster had claimed that corner, and the knowledge settled over him with sharp certainty.

This could be dangerous, he thought, and the Quest’s warning made perfect sense.

***

They left the next morning.

Darkul asked to come, but Ketal told him the risk was too high. The seriousness in Ketal’s face made it impossible for the Darkul to insist. The distance to the front was not small, but both men were Heroes, and both had trained themselves until they could eat miles the way other men eat bread. They reached the front within a few hours.

They found an empty barbarian outpost.

“It is quiet,” Bayern said.

The place had been built for numbers, with stockpiles and trenches and a framework for sending runners. No fewer than a hundred men should have been eating and sleeping there. There was no one—not a single shadow moved.

“So that is why there were no reports,” Bayern said, scowling as he stepped into the camp.

There were signs of a fight. Tents lay flattened. The earth looked as if a giant hand had raked it. Something fierce had happened, and then ended all at once.

However, there were no bodies.

“It looks as though they were taken,” Bayern said, crouching to study the marks.

The lines in the dirt told a simple story. The demons had broken the outpost, pushed the survivors down, and dragged them away. He straightened, eyes scanning, and caught the glint of a blade half buried in the hard ground. He walked over and pulled the axe free.

The head of the weapon powdered in his hand. The steel did not rust—it crumbled. He was left holding the haft and a handful of dust.

“Poison,” he said under his breath.

Ordinary corrosion did not do this. Whatever had passed through this camp had been strange and strong.

“We should split and look for survivors,” Bayern said. “The field is too broad for one pair of eyes. I will take that side.”

“All right,” Ketal said.

Bayern leaped into a lope and vanished between broken tents. Ketal took the other edge of the camp and moved along the drift of tracks, thinking as he went. The sea that touched the North also washed the shores of the White Snowfield. The Quest had warned him directly that something from the Inside had slipped out.

It did not take a genius to make the next leap. If a creature came out of the White Snowfield carrying danger great enough to warrant a warning, the warning itself would not arrive before the beast

Not many names stood up in his head. Most of the monsters in that place were possessive to a fault. They cared for their territories the way a miser cared for a locked box. They did not expand for the pleasure of expansion—they guarded.

There were three that the world knew about: the White Serpent that devoured glaciers, the White Bear that caused earthquakes, and the Ugly Rat that polluted the sea.

The serpent widened its range when it felt like it, but that looked more like a hobby than a mission. It would not come out simply because the door had not been closed. The bear’s territory lay closest to the North, which was why Bayern had met it on his first voyage, but the bear did not reach for new ground. It would not step into the world unless something drove it.

However, the last one was different.

The Ugly Rat that polluted the sea wanted more. It wanted to foul all the waters of the White Snowfield and then went on to stain the rest of the world. It was the enemy Ketal’s tribe had clashed with most often, because it kept reaching. Its territory lay not far from the place where the sea bridged the two lands.

Ketal stopped walking. The ground ahead of him had turned the color of old bruises. A green-black wash had soaked into the soil and made a slick living sheen on the stones.

“What is this?” the Holy Sword whispered. “This is filthy.”

It was not a poison found in the world of men. It was thicker and meaner, the kind of stain that would eat at the spirit and damage the root of a thing.

“I thought so,” Ketal said, his face narrowing. “Of course. I knew you would be the first to come.”

The desire to expand would never let a door stand open without testing its latch. If the Quest had warned him because of a monster from the White Snowfield, the Ugly Rat was the best fit.

His guess had landed on the mark, and with that, something inside him shifted.

“I expected this,” he said, “but I hoped it would not be true. You should have stayed buried in that place forever. Why claw your way into the open? Why insist on fouling my world?”

The emotions he kept out of sight took shape as words. The Holy Sword drew in its breath.

“Wait,” it said. “Just a minute. You—”

To the Holy Sword, Ketal had been a strangeness and a terror when someone crossed him, but he had also been a man who listened and a man who looked after others. The sword had grown fond of him in its way.

However, the man in front of it now did not feel like that man. He did not feel like a human giant who happened to be a barbarian. He felt like something whose name the sword did not know.

The person standing here was not the wanderer who laughed at cities and paid for his drinks. He was the ashen-haired barbarian of the White Snowfield, and the thing that had set foot on the earth was the one provocation that could call him out.

Ketal spoke in a low voice that held none of his earlier warmth.

“The rat is here,” he said.