Chapter 2: The Howling Moors
The mist in the Howling Moors didn’t so much roll in as it did cling. It hung in tattered gray sheets between the skeletal trees, dampening sound and swallowing distance. Every squelching step Katie took seemed to echo inward, not outward. The air tasted of peat and something metallic, like old blood.
“So, the capital,” Katie said, her voice too loud in the muffled world. “What’s it like? Skyscrapers? Sewer system? Please tell me there’s indoor plumbing.”
Calcharo moved ahead of her, a silver ghost in the gloom. He hadn’t strayed more than ten feet away since they’d entered the moors. “The Court of Sighs is made of living whitewood and sunglass. It shifts when it’s bored. The plumbing, I’m afraid, is largely metaphorical. There are gargoyles that weep warm water into basins. Very artistic. Very inconvenient.”
“Great,” she muttered, yanking her foot free from a suctioning patch of mud. Her jeans were soaked to the knee. “A sentient bathroom. Of course.”
“You get used to it.”
“I don’t plan on being here long enough to get used to sentient architecture.”
He just chuckled, the sound flat in the thick air. “That’s the spirit. Denial is an excellent coping mechanism. Right up until it isn’t.”
They walked in silence for a while. The ground began to slope into a shallow basin where the mist coiled thicker, pooling like dirty water. The reeds here were tall and bleached white, clicking together in a breeze Katie couldn’t feel. The humming she’d noticed at the edge of the glen was louder here, a low, dissonant chord that seemed to vibrate in her molars.
Calcharo stopped, holding up a gauntleted fist.She froze. “What is it?”
“The locals.” His voice was quiet, all casual humor gone. “Don’t move. Don’t speak.”
The clicking of the reeds changed rhythm. It wasn’t random anymore. It was encircling them. Katie’s breath hitched as shapes detached from the mist at the edge of the basin. They were wolfish, but woven from shadow and tangled moor-grass, their eyes points of sickly green light that left faint after-trails in the air. There were six of them. Maybe seven. The mist made it hard to count.
“Shadow-stalkers,” Calcharo murmured, his hand resting on his sword hilt. “They’re attracted to strong emotions. Panic. Fear.” He tilted his helmet toward her. “So try to think boring thoughts.”
“Easy for you to say,” she whispered back, her heart slamming against her ribs. One of the creatures took a step closer, a low, grinding growl emanating from where its chest should be. It sounded like rocks being ground together in a bag.
“On my signal,” Calcharo said, his tone conversational, “I want you to run for that stand of black trees behind us. Don’t look back.”
“What’s the signal?”
“Screaming. Probably mine, but I’m hoping for theirs.”
The largest stalker lunged. It moved with terrifying silence, a streak of darkness. Calcharo’s sword was a sudden arc of silver, meeting the thing in mid-air. There was a wet, slicing sound, not like cutting flesh, but like severing a wet canvas sack full of sticks. The creature dissolved into a puff of acrid smoke and a shower of damp peat.
The circle collapsed.
What followed wasn’t a fight; it was a brutal, efficient dissection. Calcharo moved between the lunging shadows, his blade an extension of his will. He didn’t waste a single motion. A pivot, a slash, a duck. Another stalker came apart. He was faster than anything that big had a right to be. The cocky knight was gone, replaced by something purely lethal.
Katie stumbled backward, her eyes glued to the whirlwind of metal and smoke. She forgot the plan. Forgot the trees.
A weight slammed into her side from the mist she’d thought was empty.
Claws—cold and sharp as broken glass—raked down her left arm, tearing through her jacket and skin. The pain was instant, white-hot and shocking. She cried out, falling to one knee as the creature, smaller and sleeker than the others, wheeled for another bite, its green eyes flaring.
There was a whistle, then a wet thunk.
The stalker jerked, convulsed, and evaporated. Calcharo’s longknife was buried in the ground where its chest had been. He was across the basin in moments, his boots throwing up clods of wet earth. He didn’t check the others; they’d fled, their hungry light fading into the mist.
“I said run to the trees,” he growled, dropping to a knee beside her. His voice was tight, the charm scorched away by something raw.
“It came out of nowhere,” she gasped. Her arm was on fire. Blood, shockingly red against the gray-green of the moor, welled through the shredded fabric of her jacket and dripped onto the moss.
“They’re good at that.” He brushed her hands away, his movements suddenly careful. With a deft tug from a belt-pouch, he produced a flask and a roll of clean, pale cloth. “This will hurt.”
He uncorked the flask with his teeth and poured a clear liquid over the wounds. It wasn’t alcohol. It was something colder, brighter. It sizzled faintly against her skin, pulling the pain into a sharp, focused point before numbing it. She hissed, tensing.
“Steady,” he muttered. His gauntleted hands were surprisingly gentle as he blotted the area clean and began wrapping her arm with swift, practiced efficiency. “Deep scratches. Not mortal. You’ll have a fantastic scar to explain back in Rogers Park.” The joke fell flat, his voice hollow behind the helmet.
“You’re worried,” she said, dizzy from the pain and the adrenaline.
“I’m annoyed. You’re my responsibility. If you die, I have to do the paperwork.” But his gloved thumb brushed over the unbroken skin above the bandage after he tied it off. A brief, almost unconscious gesture. He didn’t pull his hand away immediately. She could feel the cool, hard metal of his fingers against the heat of her forearm.
He was close. For the first time, she saw the fine details of his helmet—the minute scratches, the faint pattern of etching around the raven’s wings, a single, old dent near the temple. She wondered, wildly, what his breathing sounded like behind that impassive front.
“Why wear it?” The question left her before she could stop it.
His hand stilled. “The helmet?”
“Yeah. Is it a knight thing? A ‘hide-the-hideous-scar’ thing? A personal hygiene choice?”
He released her arm and stood up, breaking the contact. The familiar, cocky rhythm flooded back into his voice, but it sounded forced now, like a song played on a cracked instrument. “Maybe I’m devastatingly handsome and can’t bear to see the desire in your eyes. Or maybe I have a face like a startled squid. The mystery is part of my charm, darling.”
He retrieved his longknife, cleaned it on a tuft of grass, and sheathed it. He scanned the mist, his posture all vigilance again. But the moment hung in the air between them, thin and fragile as the moor-vapors.
Her arm throbbed under the bandage. The numbing agent was wearing off, leaving a deep, aching heat. He’d moved with such certainty, such care. It was at odds with everything he presented to the world.
“Thank you,” she said, quietly.
He waved a dismissive hand. “Don’t mention it. Literally. If word gets out Sir Calcharo played nursemaid, my terrifying reputation is ashes.” He offered her his hand to pull her up. After a second’s hesitation, she took it, letting him haul her to her feet. His grip was immovable.
“Can you walk? We need to get out of this basin. The smell of blood, even cleaned, draws more than stalkers.”
She nodded, testing her weight. “I can walk.”
“Good. The black trees aren’t far. We’ll make camp there. It’s defensible.”
He led the way once more, but his pace was slower, his head constantly turning, listening. The easy swagger was tempered. Katie followed, cradling her bandaged arm. The pain was a sharp, clarifying anchor. This was real. The blood was real. The protection, however grudgingly offered, was real.
The black trees were a cluster of towering, petrified sentinels, their branches forming a tangled roof against the mist. Calcharo checked the small clearing at their center, declared it free of immediate threats, and set about making a fire with a practiced efficiency that spoke of countless nights like this.
As the flames caught on the dry, resinous wood he’d produced from his pack, pushing back the chill and the clinging gray, Katie finally asked the other question brewing in her mind.
“Why were you even out here? In the Glimmerglen. You said you were on your way to the capital, but this seems like a… detour.”
He paused, feeding a twig to the fire. The flames reflected on the curves of his helmet, painting them in shifting gold and orange. “I was looking for Sky Tears,” he said, his voice quieter now. “Reports of instability. I got… curious.”
“About things falling out of them.”
“About why they were opening again.” He turned the helmet toward her. The firelight drowned in the dark visor. “Then you fell out. Spilling latte and existential dread. Not quite the omen I was expecting.”
She managed a weak smile. “Sorry to disappoint.”
“You didn’t.” The statement was simple, stark. He looked back into the fire. “You’re a puzzle. A frustrating, sarcastic, completely ordinary puzzle from a world that shouldn’t be able to touch this one. I dislike unsolved puzzles.”
They lapsed into silence, the fire crackling between them. The moors whispered and hummed outside their circle of light. Katie’s eyes grew heavy, the exhaustion of terror and injury pulling at her.
“Get some sleep,” he said. He’d unsheathed his sword and laid it across his knees, a statue of watchful silver in the flickering dark. “I’ll keep the squid-faced horrors at bay.”
“What about you?”
“I don’t sleep much.”
There was a weight in those four words. A finality. She didn’t push. She just nodded, using her good arm to pull her damp jacket tighter around herself. As she drifted off, the last thing she saw was the unmoving profile of the knight, his unseen gaze fixed on the darkness beyond, utterly alone in the heart of the howling, watching moors.