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Copyright ©, Anna Sokalska, 2023

All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be copied, distributed, or published in any
form without permission from Team17 Digital Limited.
This is a work of fiction in which all events and characters in this book are completely
imaginary. Any resemblance to actual people is entirely coincidental.
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Edited by: Lucy Newman, Stan Just, and Matt Bradford-Aunger
Published by: Team17 Digital Limited. 3 Red Hall Avenue, Paragon Business Park,
Wakefield, WF1 2UL
 Anna Sokalska

Tales from Gord:

THE SUN-BRINGER

Chapter I

The faint, cursed daylight settled upon the meadow with a dim, purple glow. Heavy with the weight
of its flowering heads, the tall, drowsy grass bent, and the dew caught in its long hair shimmered like
stars in an emerald sky. The air was filled with the sweet scent of flowers and everything was still,
embraced in a peaceful silence.

Mara’s steps were cautious; her heartbeat and breath braced, ready to race at the slightest sign of
a strange presence. As she made her way, the soothing, nectarous aroma of wild herbs became
overwhelmed by the nauseating odor of rot. She followed the stench to an ugly, grey boulder that,
unlike many others, could have been hiding an ore of gold. There was no shine on its surface though,
only fresh entrails smeared over it. It thickly covered the rock with an otherworldly purple, discolored
by what little sunlight remained. It was only when Mara approached with the torchlight that it revealed
its true, beautiful scarlet.

No matter how many times she had seen it, she couldn’t get used to the thought that humans and
the creatures of Veles shared the same flesh and blood. It was upsetting, enough to make her retch.
But she had to face it. That was her only chore, to pick up the dead. The lost children who never came
back, exhausted foragers who’d passed away while scavenging and fallen warriors who lost their lives
fighting the horrors of the eternal darkness.

Mara found him just a few steps away from the rock. He was laid out flat, his face to the ground,
arms outstretched out above his head, reaching for the safety of the gord. He must have tried to crawl,
naively heading back until so much blood left his body his heart simply stopped beating.

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 Mara placed the torch into the ground and squatted next to the corpse. She examined his back for
wounds. It was second nature now, but it wasn’t always. Mara was still finding clumps of putrid blood
and intestine that had woven their way into her tunic the last time she forgot. There were no signs of
any wounds this time, not from this angle at least. She grasped him by the vest and summoned all her
strength to flip him on his back, collapsing into him as she did. As she pulled back, she saw his face
- or rather what was left of it.

Mara squealed and quickly muffled her mouth with her now bloodied hands. She paused for a
moment and stared through stifled tears. She’d seen so many dead people already in her short life,
but it didn’t make it easier. Each time chipped a bit of her spirit away. All she could do was to try to
find solace in a short prayer to the true gods. She closed her eyes and took a moment to calm herself,
drawing a long, deep breath of thick, rancid air.

‘Damned gazers…’, she whispered to herself and shook her head, sniffling, ‘I can’t believe he
looked up. He knew better…’

Mara looked around, but she couldn’t find any clues as to what could have startled him. Scouting
wasn’t her job anyway and even though she wanted to help her people more, it was forbidden. She
might run into whatever creature left the bloodied corpse, and would risk bringing its attention to the
gord. It was too dangerous.

‘May your soul reach the sun’, she whispered, ‘and may no shadow be cast upon you ever again.
Forgive me, now’.

Then, just as she was taught, Mara proceeded to remove everything valuable from the lifeless
body. She had to do this first, in case she had to abandon the corpse and run for her life.

A short sword was what she noticed first. It lay down in the grass only two steps away from the
man. It was forged of good steel, heavy, with a leather covered grip. Despite being passed through
generations, it could still prove to be a fine weapon for another warrior. A fairly new sheath was
attached to the man’s belt. It was made of bear hide with a fur lining soaked in boar fat which protected
the blade. Unfortunately, there was nothing truly special about the sword. It had probably killed fewer
enemies than the number of owners it had, Mara thought, and some of them had probably died before
they could even unsheathe it.

This man fought well though. The gazer that attacked him ran away bleeding heavily enough to
leave a noticeable trail leading deep into the forest. Once Mara noticed it, she kept her focus on the
tall, dark trees. Their whispers carried in the wind as if they were casting hostile spells upon anyone

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who’d dare to come close enough. Mara knew all too well that gazers stalked in packs and if they
noticed she was there…

Her hands started to sweat as she hurried through the rest of her routine. Grabbing the sword by
the hilt, she scrubbed the bloodied blade against the man’s pants, sheathed it, put it aside and kept
searching the body. She undid the man’s belt and opened his leather vest. It was stiff, made of thick
hide, good enough to soften a small blade’s blow, but no good against the vicious, inhuman creatures
that lurked in the dark. Mara searched for pockets but found none; yet, there was something hard
under the man’s hemp tunic. She slid her hand under the garment, keen to avoid the man’s cold skin.
There was a charm that had been sewed into the fabric. She could just about make it out through the
tunic’s loose weaving - a circle with many arms, all made of gold. She tugged at it, desperate to rip it
out, but the hemp warp and weft were too strong. She gave up, deflated. If the sunny charm was
supposed to bring good luck, it failed anyway.

‘Let’s get you out of here’, said Mara as she finished her search. She tied the sword’s sheath to her
belt and put the torch, still lit, in a holder made of iron and leather. It was a gift, made by her brother,
Yaro, so she wouldn’t have to put the light out. Then, lifting the corpse’s arms, she started dragging
it along, step by heavy step, towards the settlement.

It was a horrible job, but Mara had no other skills that could allow her to help her tribe in any other
way. She was just strong enough to drag the corpses; the dead couldn’t complain for being mistreated
anyway, and leaving them to rot would attract creatures and spread diseases. That was as bad, if not
worse than leaving good weapons to waste. All risks and chances had to be calculated like that. Life
at the gord was organized to ensure the survival of the group, even at the cost of individuals - and her
life was worth the least. Everyone understood that very well, and Mara herself never complained.

In a world without the sun in the sky, it was not easy to track the flow of time, but Mara and her
people had their own ways. There was still a faint difference between the day and night – the day cast
a purple hue on everything, while the night was either as dark as the deepest cave, or lit by the
moonlight, pale and white like bare bones. People could see the differences, and creatures even more
so, but the most sensitive to the light changes were the plants. Their very existence depended on every
little bit of the purple rays. They moved their leaves and opened their flowers towards it, feeling,
sensing, reaching for the godly source of life. Watching the plants gave Mara an idea of how much
time had passed, and how much she had left before night fell.

She was not scared of the darkness though. The full moon was nigh, about to loom over the world
with its round, bloodshot face. It was the most dreadful time of its whole cycle, even worse than

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nights when it would disappear and steal all the light away with it. No, the bloody full moons were
much worse. They were when Chors’ powers were at their peak. The god of night and fear was
triumphing then, reaching out towards the lands of man and flooding them with his spawn. The more
people feared him and his monsters, the more powerful he grew, and the more strength his blood
moon cast upon his foul servants. Breaking this cycle was close to impossible.

Now, the purple glow was fading, and she could already see glimpses of the moon’s swelling face
hovering behind the cover of dark, swollen clouds. The moon’s light was still pale, but she knew it
would become vermillion soon, as it climbed on the sky. She changed position. Now she faced the
corpse and walked backwards, but her hands were still sweaty and grew tired from awkwardly
dragging the body behind her. She couldn’t stand looking at the man’s missing face, so she took her
headscarf off and tied it around his head.

‘If I only had a cart…’, said Mara under her breath. ‘Or at least some kind of harness…’

But a cart would do her no good, not in a thicket, nor on rocky, steep hills, and definitely not in
the middle of the swamps. If people died, they usually fell in places like that. If she only was strong
enough to simply carry them on her back, as she should! There was only one time when she came
across a wandering merchant, dead by the trail leading to another gord. He was so skinny that she
could actually lift his body without much effort but, alas, he had nothing of value on him. A waste of
good fortune if ever there was one.

Nevertheless, a harness was an idea she had discussed with Yaro before, and he promised to make
one for her eventually.

‘If he only had time…’, Mara spoke her thought out loud again and sighed, distracting herself from
the task at hand as the body became stuck on some roots. She was closer to safety now. Leaving the
meadow, she entered the small woods near the gord. No danger should find her, as people of her tribe
often roamed there. The trees were left to flourish, free to grow as nature intended, so there was good
soil for the mushrooms to thrive. As the path turned, there were sporadic spots of cleared out, bare
ground, with nothing but a circle made of stones and remains of burned out bonfire. Seeing even this
small hint of humanity made Mara feel slightly safer, especially on an evening like this one.

With her mind focused on her footing and daydreaming about the promise of a harness, Mara
didn’t notice the sound of footsteps approaching until it was too late. Something hit her on her side,
right under the rib, causing her to release a brief shout of pain. Confused and startled, Mara let go of
the corpse and attempted to leap to one side. In a cruel twist of fate, her footing that was so carefully
placed mere moments ago became tangled in the dead man’s arms. She tumbled to her back, the

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sheathed sword slamming into her hip as the corpse rolled off to the side. Blinded by pain yet without
hesitation, she grabbed the sword and ripped it from its casing, waving it in a frantic and awkward
flurry left and right above her.

‘Calm down, Mara’, a scolding voice projected from under the hood which covered the woman’s
head, as she effortlessly parried Mara’s floundering blade with the back of her gloved hand. ‘Thank
Daboh it’s just me. Otherwise you would be dead now’.

Mara took a deep breath as she sheathed the sword back. She recognised the woman now. She was
dressed for scouting, and her voice was distinctive.

‘I’m sorry, Navoya’, Mara apologized and held her head down. ‘I got distracted…’

‘Was the distraction worth your life?’

Navoya sighed and reached her right hand out to Mara; in the other one she was holding a torch, a
proper one, only given out to scouts. Mara accepted her hand and Navoya pulled her gently, but
firmly, helping her stand up.

‘I would hate to have to pick up your corpse one day, Mara’, said Navoya, as she took her hood
off, revealing her concerned face. She was older than Mara, that was obvious at the first glance. The
fact she lived long, despite being a scout, was intimidating. Mara was in awe, paralyzed by her
presence. Navoya was not only strong, but also beautiful. Her hair was dark as night sky, and her skin
of the same color as dried, reddish clay; she had golden eyes like a wild cat, and a scar cutting through
her eyebrow, a mark of bravery.

Just as there were people born without any Daboh-given gifts, like Mara, there were also people
born with exceptional skills, just like Navoya. Being a scout was a fate decided by gods, but Navoya
still could not understand why Mara was unable to learn even the simplest lessons from her.

‘And I would hate it if you had to pick up my corpse. It would mean no one else survived to take
care of such small tasks…’, said Mara, meaning it as a compliment, but making it sound more morbid
than she anticipated.

Navoya frowned and decided to change the topic.

‘Who is that?’, she asked, approaching the piled corpse Mara had discarded in her haste.

‘One of the warriors who joined us recently’, Mara explained, as Navoya barely spent any time
inside of the gord and paid no much attention to the details of its affairs. Her job was to track monsters
and dismantle hostile traps, so the warriors could focus on more serious matters.

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 Navoya knelt next to the corpse and lifted the headscarf. Unshaken by the sight of it, she examined
the mangled face for a good while in the light of her torch.

‘Well…’, she said. ‘It’s good and bad news, I suppose. Good news is that the gazer was still young.
It only ate the face, and caused no other wounds. But if it was injured…’, she raised her eyes at Mara,
who nodded in response. ‘Well then, there is a chance the pack will try to avenge it… Funny, how
they care for their young.’

‘Can you help me get to the gord?’, Mara asked, grabbing the dead man’s hands.

‘Sure’, said Navoya. She felt bad for Mara, even though she did not want to express it openly.
‘I’ve been craving mead, to be honest. If a swarm of monsters is coming, I won’t stop them all by
myself anyway’, Navoya shrugged and turned around to lead the way.

They walked in silence, through the woods and over the stream, crossing a narrow but sturdy tree
trunk serving as a bridge. Then, once they set foot on a path rising from among the swamps, they
finally saw the distant lights of the gord.

It was already night when they reached the gord gates. No soul was permitted to work in the
swamps nor by the lake at that time. It felt as if only the lit firefly bonfires marking the path were
defending them from whatever was lurking in the stinking mud.

It was only when the gord gates closed behind them that Mara finally dropped the corpse and dared
to look behind her. There, in the dark sky, hovering above the gord’s solid, wooden walls, was the
blood moon. It was so big and so overwhelming that even the bravest hearts skipped a beat at its sight.

‘Navoya!’, called someone, a man. ‘You’re back? How is it out there?’

Another scout, proudly wearing his attire and equipment, came closer, but paid no attention to
Mara.

‘What do you think?’, Navoya replied, matching the man’s natural bravado. ‘The damned moon
made all the deer flee and the woods were full of wormlings. Mara found your missing warrior, too.
Look. A gazer got him. Young one, I think.’

The scout looked at Mara briefly and with some sort of impatience, if not disgust on his clean
shaven face. ‘You can go’, he said harshly, waving his hand at her as if she were a stray cat.

Mara exchanged looks with Navoya, but there, in front of others, the clay-skinned scout couldn’t
help her even if she wanted to. Mara said nothing and just left. She had to take the sword to the

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warriors’ training ground anyway, and after that she knew the hot waters of balia were waiting to
soothe her aches.

She didn’t hang around. After bundling the sword on a pile of reclaimed weapons due for reissue,
Mara rushed to the baths. She climbed the raised platform and lowered herself into a wooden tub big
enough for a few people.

‘Praise the sun’, she sighed as the steaming pool sterilized the lingering scent of rot from her
nostrils.

‘Praise’, replied Pomir, a fisherman used to silence and slowly passing time. He liked to bathe at
night, when everyone else except for the scouts were asleep, so he could enjoy his peace and quiet.

‘Praise, praise, so what’, answered the second person occupying the balia, a young, stocky woman
with hands hard and strong from working with iron. Her name was Tulignieva. ‘All the prayers and
no mercy for any of us. Come, sit this way, or you’ll have to look at this cursed moon.’

‘Thank you’, said Mara as she pulled up next to Tulignieva, although she would’ve preferred to
look at the moon rather than have it behind her back.

‘I’ve found a…’

‘Shh’, Pomir the fisherman cut her off before she could say anymore, and the bath fell silent. Mara
closed her eyes and relaxed into the water.

She must have dozed off, because the next thing she knew, Pomir had left the balia and the
ironworker, now completely red from the heat of the water, broke the silence.

‘He may be next’, Tulignieva said with a low, jaded tone. ‘And he knows that.’

‘Is this about the Horror?…’

‘Isn’t everything about the Horror, in the end?’, Tulignieva scoffed and threw her head backwards,
looking up at the low, heavy clouds moving above their heads, black and grey bellies soaked in the
red moonlight. ‘Sooner or later it will kill us anyway, if it pleases. We’re only alive because it enjoys
torturing us’.

‘Did we manage to gather enough?… I could help…’

‘You’re helping already’, said Tulignieva, but her tone sounded off for that brief moment. ‘And
your brother…’, she added with obvious admiration. She didn’t have to finish her sentence. Yaro was
a hero. Even children knew it.

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 ‘Even my brother won’t be able to stop the Horror, though’.

‘Maybe he will’, said Tulignieva firmly, but they both knew it was a lie.

Mara woke up after a long, dreamless sleep. The short and fat candle was still burning, but it was
almost gone, which meant she had slept for the whole night and most of the morning. She moved
slowly and felt the stiffness through her entire body. It had taken three days, venturing out of the gord
and back, before she finally found the first of the missing warriors. She didn’t realize at the time, but
all her pain and fatigue had been masked by fear and adrenaline. Now, in the safe comfort of the gord,
her body had given in.

It took a lot of willpower to get up from her pallet, for as uncomfortable the prickly hay covered
with rough linen was, it was still easier to lay down flat than move around. But she had to get back
up on her feet and prove herself useful. Otherwise she would have to starve.

To her surprise, the gord was full of people. Many of those who worked outside the wooden
palisade remained inside. There was a growing crowd gathering in the middle of the settlement, and
while some people were staying at the meadery or just forming smaller groups elsewhere, the majority
of attention was brought to the central square.

‘What’s happening?’, asked Mara, approaching a group of female thatchers, all dressed up and
equipped with knives.

‘We don’t know’, one of them answered, in a solemn tone.

‘The gates are kept closed. No one is allowed outside.’

‘But why?’ Mara’s voice quivered nervously, and realizing she'd not get an answer from the
women, she looked around hoping for any clues. ‘Did you see my brother?’, she asked them again,
but they only shrugged.

Mara was about to walk around and search for Yaro, to ask the others if they’d seen him, when
she noticed a change in the atmosphere. Conversations had begun to quieten around her and everyone
seemed to be looking in the same direction.

‘Praise the sun!’, a strong, yet soft voice rose above everyone’s heads.

‘May Daboh shine on us all!’, answered the crowd with a choir of hopeful but nervous voices.

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 Mara walked around the crowd and, squeezing in between a group of men and the wall of a storage
house, she managed to get close enough to see the man speaking – the tribe’s elder.

He was not an elderly person, though. Most of them had died over the past two winters, exhausted
by either work, illnesses or hunger. The current elder, Bolebor, was the most experienced and the
bravest of all of the settlers. His beard was still dark, and his hands strong enough to wield weapons
and tools.

‘Brothers! Sisters!’, started Bolebor. ‘The blood moon is upon us. We can’t have anyone leave the
gord without my specific orders. If one of you goes out without permission, do not expect to be
searched for and rescued, if something were to happen to you. Do not expect to be welcomed back,
either. We cannot let anyone return with monsters following you back to the gord. Is that understood?’

People murmured.

‘Is that understood?’, Bolebor raised his voice and frowned.

‘Yes! Yes!’, this time the answers were much more clear.

‘Good, then.’

‘But what about the Horror?!’, shouted someone hidden in the crowd.

‘About the Horror’, Bolebor followed. ‘Me and the warriors have decided. We will not fulfill its
demands.’ His words were loud and clear. He paused for a moment, letting people vent their surprise
and fear. ‘We are short of supplies. We cannot forage for more food because of the blood moon. And
if we give it all to the Horror, we will certainly die of starvation, that is if it doesn’t kill us anyway,
unsatisfied with the amount’.

‘So there’s nothing we can do?!’, shouted someone again.

‘Will we just wait here to die?’

‘Let’s abandon this place!’

More and more voices were being raised, and Bolebor was listening to everything patiently.
Finally, people fell silent again, tense and scared, waiting for his answers.

‘I cannot force you to stay’, said Bolebor. ‘If you want to run away, go. But it will not solve
anything. I know that and you know that. You will die, alone, in the darkness, shredded to pieces by
some of Chors’ servants, if you’re lucky, or tortured by Veles worshipers.’

‘There are other gords’, someone pointed out.

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 ‘There are other gords’, Bolebor agreed. ‘But what makes you think they will let you in? Even if
they trust that you’re just a harmless wanderer, can they give you shelter? Can they afford to feed
you? Do they need your skills? Or will they just kill you on the spot, take your things or feed you to
the Horror that terrorizes their gord?’

Whoever suggested running away now had nothing more to say. In the distance, a woman began
to sob and another one joined her.

‘So we die’, said the fisherman, Pomir. Mara looked at him, calm as ever, and she wondered if he
still had a soul, or was he long dead already, spending his days at the silent pond, catching fish and
listening to whispers of the forest spirits.

‘Perhaps’, said Bolebor. ‘But first, we fight.’

Someone burst out with a hysterical laughter.

‘No one can fight a Horror!’, said somebody else angrily.

‘I would rather die here!’, added a woman standing not far from Mara. She was holding her
children, golden haired twins, one boy and one girl, firmly and closely to herself. The boy was looking
around, fists clenched, and the girl was covering her face with the mother’s skirt, hiding her tears.

‘As I said, I can’t force you. But our warriors already agreed. We will fight the Horror. It will
happen,’ Bolebor added strongly, ‘and instead of trying to talk us out of it, help us. Share your food
portions. Give your weapons. Pray.’

‘Isn’t it better to just see what will happen if we don’t give the Horror the food it wanted?’ another
villager chimed in, “maybe it won’t be that angry… rather than go poke it with spears and make it
really mad…’

‘You’re forgetting that we may actually be able to kill it. And be free of it for the rest of our years.
Even if this time we somehow manage to survive, soon it will make us comply with its demands
again,” replied Bolebor, “And why do you think it does that? It’s not hungry! It feeds on our fear.
And it will never get enough of it.’

Bolebor looked around but no one else was willing to argue with him anymore. The atmosphere
became even more grim. People hung their heads down and some whispered curses. A few were
crying silently, tears flowing out of their still eyes. The likelihood that every solution would lead to
the same outcome, everyone’s death, had stunned the crowd into an aghast silence.

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 ‘Where is my brother?’ asked Mara, raising her voice, but the crowd had already started flowing,
breaking apart and heading in different directions. Figuring Bolebor hadn’t heard her, she asked again.
‘Where is Yaro?’

‘Your brother left with the group of warriors and scouts’, answered Bolebor quickly, very
obviously trying to shun her.

‘That I know’, she persisted. ‘But where to? What for? And when is he coming back?’

‘Girl…’, Bolebor looked down at her. From up close he was very tall, his shoulders broad and
straight, he was a spearman turned ironworker. ‘You’re the one picking corpses, right?’, he asked,
frowning. She nodded. ‘You’ve got Daboh’s blessing. So very brave, walking into the dark forest,
picking up dead to get them buried properly. Their souls…’

‘Bolebor,’ she interrupted him boldly, mustering all of her courage. ‘I asked you about my brother.
I may be useless, but I’m not dumb.’

Bolebor folded his arms and grunted.

‘We are all doing our best, girl. Your brother too’, he said and turned around to leave.

‘Then why didn’t you go with him?’, she asked, annoyed, and followed him, but two other warriors
who accompanied him stood in her way. He walked off without answering her.

‘Go to your place’, said the axeman, whose name she didn’t even know, and they both followed
their leader. Mara sighed angrily but gave up. What could she do, really? She wasn’t as brave as her
brother. Just this brief conversation made her tremble inside.

She walked around the gord to shake the nervous feeling off. She was asking around to see if
anyone needed her help, but everyone knew she had no skills, and given the circumstances most of
the settlers had nothing to do anyway.

The winter was already over, but it was still cold. They lived mostly off the supplies gathered
during the previous warm season, and the deer they were able to hunt. There was not much work for
lumberjacks or the clay workers, as the trees, marked with their axes, had to dry out first, and the
ground was too cold to collect clay from. Those who had skilled hands and minds were picking up
other tasks, like smelting or preparing reeds for producing tools and various items, but now everything
had ground to a halt. What was the point, if the Horror was about to kill them all anyway?

Mara was about to go back to her hut, just to lie down and rest her mind, but then she noticed a
group of people carrying the dead body out of the burial mound. The previous evening they had

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cleansed it, wrapped it in a raw hemp cloth and incensed it with herbs. Now, placed on a primitive
stretcher, the dead warrior was carried outside of the mound, for the second part of the ritual. The
mound was in fact a rather big structure, made of a wooden framing, covered densely with reed and
then with a thick layer of ground. There was grass and flowers planted on top of it, and a pennant for
each passed soul, and inside, no matter the season, it was always cool and there was always a herbal
scent around it.

The group carried the man to where a ritual bedding was prepared. It wasn’t big, mostly made of
sticks and flimsy reeds, as wood was too scarce now. They placed the body on top of it and started
hitting it with long, thin twigs.

‘Be gone, snakes, servants of Veles! Rise, soul, fly on the wings of the birds…’, they kept chanting,
as they were hitting the corpse. Mara approached, picked up a twig from the bedding and joined them.
She looked at the corpse. The man’s face was covered with a simple wooden mask, round, covered
with tree bark and its mouth and eye holes carved out.

‘May your soul join the true gods!’

‘May they cure your pain and ease your woe!’

‘And when the time comes, may the birds carry you on their wings back to us, reborn stronger than
ever!’

‘Praise! Praise!’, a small but devoted choir of voices was guiding the dead man’s soul into the
afterlife, until the eldest woman decided the soul was gone and safe. Then, they carried the now empty
body into the burial mound, where it was laid to rest in a cold, dark burrow filled with herbs and
amulets resembling the sun.

It was in moments like this Mara felt she had done something right. Without her act, the man
would be rotting in the woods, alone in the dark, and eventually Veles’ serpents would come for his
soul. They would take it into his Underworld kingdom, where he would have to serve the dark god,
and who knows, maybe he would even be turned into a Horror…

Mara threw her twig into one of the ceremonial fires and she left, as watching the fire for too long
was not good. Everybody knew that. Fire was to be used, not to be worshiped. Only the mad prayed
to the moon, fire or ground. And that’s why the world turned dark.

‘Come, Mara’, said a girl who passed by with two other girls and three more boys. ‘We’re going
to listen to one of the villagers tell a story!’

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 ‘Oh,’ said Mara, but the children had already left in a hurry, and she had to follow them by herself.
There was indeed a group gathering, this time near the meadery. Somebody had prepared a nice, small
bonfire, adults sat around on wooden and stone stools with mead, and kids were trying to bake
flatbreads on hot stones, to later dip into honey and eat.

‘Who’s gonna tell the story?’

‘And what about?’

‘Just no Horrors, please.’

‘No, no, let’s listen to something nice!’

‘How about the story where an imp was trying to become human?’, asked one man, whom the
mead was already making more jolly.

‘Oh, I know this one! Isn’t he still living among us?’, another one said, them and their friends
laughing together.

‘There aren’t just imps living among us’, said a young man, a dreamer who loved all kinds of
stories, who tried to read the sky on some days and, on other days, to make all the tools better. ‘There
are legends of those who whisper, and who bear a mark on their skin, who kill monsters with just a
word and who will make the sun rise up again’.

‘That is creepy!’

‘How would they make the sun rise?’, asked one of the kids, too curious to hold back.

‘What does the sun look like?’, asked a girl, pouting.

The adults pondered the question, while the kids all frowned and pierced the young man with their
stares.

‘Oh!’, said the young man, a bit perplexed, but eager to share more detail, ‘The sun is light. It’s
warm and bright, but unlike the fire, it’s pure, and good, and causes no harm. The sun knows no greed
nor jealousy, and is a friend to all people. But what is the sun, you ask? The sun is the god, my
children. We call him Daboh, which means he who gives, it is because of him that mankind was able
to spread and thrive and have no worries, until the Age of Misery began.

You see, men and women were living happily on this world, building homes and hunting deer, and
there was nothing that could threaten them. There was no place they would be scared to go to, and
some of the gods liked it. Daboh liked it this way, and Praboh, his father, did too…’

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 ‘Damn Praboh!’, one of the men, becoming both drunk and grumpy, interrupted the storyteller and
spat on the ground.

‘Yes, well… Where was I? So people were living happily, but some gods did not like it. And one
of them was Veles, the god of the Underworld. It was him who created monsters and Horrors, only
because he hated people. And that is when Daboh came down from the sky to help us…’

‘What did he do?’, the children were growing impatient.

‘Did he die?…’

‘No, no, he didn’t die. But he made a great sacrifice so people could arm themselves and fight the
Horrors. Because, you see, Horrors love darkness, and they fear light and the sun. So people started
fighting them, with Daboh’s aid, and they were winning. Veles, who became ever more angry and
evil, was so jealous he gave up half of his own body and created the greatest Horror of all times…
enormous and dark, with teeth and claws sharp as peaks of the mountains, and eyes burning like
thousands of bonfires…’

One of the younger girls started crying, and even the boys who tried to appear brave, got uneasy
and pale.

‘So the warriors…’, the young man hesitated. ‘They took their weapons… and uh…’

‘Are you sure you know the story?’, asked one of the women.

‘Well, it is not that clear, you know. I heard this part from a wanderer once. He mentioned a god
I’ve never heard about before. He said he was Veles’ son, but for some reason he wanted to fight him.
Maybe he wanted to become the new god of the Underworld? I can’t remember, really… but he did
give people more weapons and he taught them how to whisper... And they all fought the Horrors…’

‘How to whisper?! Your story is hogwash.’ One of the men got so annoyed he stood up and threw
his emptied mug on the ground and began to make his leave.

‘No, no! Just wait!’, the young man was getting more nervous with the growing tension. ‘What is
important about that story, is that the people were winning! The weapons they got were so strong that
they could wound the Horrors! And they would win… if they only stayed brave and loyal to each
other! But… one of them, a warrior, the whispering one, he listened to Svarog, the mad god of fire…
And he was so tempted by the power that was promised to him, that he turned against his brothers
and sisters. He used his whispers and the weapon he got from the god against them, and that’s when

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the darkness covered the sky. The whisperer’s spell was so hateful and strong it separated the ground
from the sky, like a mask on a dead man’s face, only letting a tiny bit of light through…’

‘Why couldn’t anyone get rid of that spell?’, asked one of the adults, entirely serious. ‘Why not
use another spell?’

‘Well’, the young man scratched his head and hesitated for a moment. ‘From what I know, all of
the weapons were thrown away, and the whispering warriors who wielded them were chased out, so
they could not cast an even worse spell. No one could trust them anymore… nor the son of Veles,
who in the end only made his father stronger…’

‘You can never trust the gods.’

‘Only Daboh’.

‘But Daboh is weak…’

‘Daboh is resting, asleep behind the veil of darkness’, said the young storyteller. ‘And one day,
when the right weapon is found, a brave warrior will use it to cut through that dark veil, and will free
Daboh and save mankind from the Horrors and foul gods.’

‘That’s why’, an older woman picked up the story, trying to change the tone. ‘We all have to stay
brave and hopeful. Everyone has to work hard and survive, so one day us or our children can see the
sun rise again.’

‘Let’s hear about that imp!’, yelled the man, now completely drunk, and his friends joined him,
laughing.

Mara stood up and left the group. The story didn’t help, instead only made her feel even more
helpless. She went to the storage house to get her daily portion of dried mushrooms and grains, she
chewed half of them as she sat next to an old wooden statue of a life-sized boar and then went back
to her hut. She couldn’t fall asleep, her thoughts racing through her head, worried about her brother,
and when she finally did sleep, her mind conjured an awful nightmare.

She saw her brother, lost in the forest, trying to climb out of a hole in the ground – a footstep of
some giant Horror or maybe just the ground collapsed because of tunnels dug by the bloodworms.
But he was there, trying to climb up, scratching the soil with his hands, ripping his skin off and
bleeding. No, it wasn’t just because of the rocks or the roots, but there was something in the ground,
something sharp. He dug out a blade, a long, sharp blade made of black steel or maybe a stone, shiny
and so big it had to be made for a giant. A god’s weapon! She saw him raising it towards the sky and

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shouting, and then the sky opened, and thunder rumbled, making the earth shake, but it wasn’t the
sun that showed through the cracks in the sky, but blood, a rain of blood…

Mara woke up, breathing violently and covered in sweat.

‘Yaro…’, she muttered, her voice breaking. The nightmare was still so vivid, she could feel the
bloody raindrops, warm and sticky, on her skin…

She got up and quietly sneaked out of her hut. Hers was a back room, with a separate door, for it
was used before as storage for tannins and dyes, but the wood creaking could still wake up the other
women who slept under the same roof. It was three of them and their children that slept there at night,
and during the day they were making threads and weaving cloths, and sometimes making leather
belts. Mara usually spent her days outside of the gord anyway, trying not to be a bother to anyone,
but when she was going to sleep she tried to be as quiet as possible. She knew some people avoided
her because of her job, thinking that she may carry diseases caught from the corpses. That’s why it
was so important to her not to be a nuisance to the weavers, and also to not embarrass her brother,
who convinced them to let her stay with them in the first place.

The gord at night appeared empty. Everyone, except for the guards, were asleep. The warriors
guarding the palisade and gates were standing on their posts, still and quiet enough to be taken for
shadows. The torches were burning – they always were – and the blood moon was already past its
peak, becoming smaller and more pale, yet still no less disturbing than before.

Mara walked through the gord quietly, happy to catch a breath of fresh air and shed the nightmare
from her mind.

‘Can’t sleep?’, asked one of the guards at the gates, when she approached. He was not much older
than her, a soft, gentle young man who just wanted to help others.

‘I think it’s the moon…’, she lied. ‘Do you mind?’, she asked and pointed at the ladder leading to
the top of the gate, where another guard had his post. The young man shrugged his arms and she
climbed up.

‘Huh?’, the other guard looked at her, surprised. It seemed he was about to fall asleep on his watch.
He was sitting on a long log, serving as a bench, leaning against the back wall of the gate’s palisade.

‘Mind some company?’, she asked, sitting down next to him. ‘I can watch the swamps for you…’

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 ‘I could use a nap…’, he admitted and in no time he was snoring faintly, while Mara was anchoring
her eyes in the dark shadow of woods far ahead, near the horizon line. The path was lit up by the
fireflies – cleverly constructed small bonfires that could burn for a day or longer – and sometimes a
moving shadow could be seen within their glow, accompanied by a low, long croaking sound...

It was a few hours later, when the blood moon disappeared for good and the purple hue of the
daytime came back. Mara felt a cold sweat breaking on her back and took hold of the sleeping guard’s
hand.

‘Look! Look! It’s the gazers!… A pack of gazers is coming!’ she yelped, shaking the guard's
shoulder vigorously.

The guard jolted from his slumber and leaned over the front of the palisade; he strained his eyes
in the darkness, trying to make out what shapes and movements he could.

‘It’s not gazers, stupid. It’s people’, he said and he stretched his arms and legs.

‘What?’, she gasped, but he pushed past her and climbed the ladder.

‘Get ready to open the gate’, she heard him saying to the other guards. ‘They’re coming back’.

Mara’s heart started beating fast. She leaned over the palisade now too and was watching the
incoming group like a hawk. Soon she recognized the human shapes, and then, eventually, her
brother’s face, orange and framed in the light cast by the fireflies.

When there was no doubt it was them, the guards opened the gate and let them in.

‘Not now, Mara’, said Yaro, when she ran to him right away. He was leading the group and had a
duty to report to the elder first. But it wasn’t just that. His face was dark and tense, and so were the
faces of other warriors and scouts. They were all silent and surrounded by some kind of heavy,
suffocating air. Mara stepped back and watched the tired, somber group walk away towards the
elder’s hut.

A long time went by. So long that Mara could not imagine what they were possibly talking about.
At first she waited patiently, but eventually she decided to eavesdrop and even tried to peek inside
through a hole found in the wooden wall. But she couldn’t see nor hear anything. Impatiently, she
started circling in front of the hut, then grew tired and sat near it, then went on a brief walk only to
rush back in case she would miss her brother coming out. When he finally appeared, she stood still,
watching him, hoping for him to notice her, but he just left, consumed by his thoughts and blind to
everything around him.

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 Mara’s anxiousness was building up inside her, but she told herself to wait some more. If her
brother needed rest, then he certainly deserved it. A day passed, and then another, until she eventually
decided to find him and talk to him.

‘Hey, Mara’, he said in a flat tone when she found him sitting on top of the scout’s tower. It took
her a good while to find him there.

‘Why are you here? Are you alright?’, she asked.

‘I’m fine…’, he said without looking at her. His eyes were focused on something far ahead.

‘Where were you?’, she continued, seeing very clearly that he was everything but fine.

‘Oh… you know. In the forest’, he answered, flat again, but then, suddenly, he smiled wide and
chuckled. ‘Where else could I be? Silly! It’s only the forest. Forest to the left. And forest to the right.
In front of you and behind your back… It has surrounded us, Mara. It’s everywhere.’

‘Of course, brother. Same as the ground is under our feet and the sky above our heads. What else
could there be?…’ She paused, worried. ‘You seem tired, Yaro. Did you find anything there?’

‘Oh yes, we did!’, he said, excited. ‘We’ve found the Horror! We’ve seen it…’

Mara held her breath. No one has ever dared to get close to the Horror’s lair, not to mention the
Horror itself. The offerings were always left at the border of the cursed land, where the fields were
turning to dead, infertile ground. No one dared to go past it. They only knew about its demands
through the dreams that haunted the witch who lived in the forest. She was always right and they
learned to never doubt her, especially after that one time when they ignored her advice.

‘So the Horror is real’, Mara whispered.

‘Oh, yes, it is! Very real!’, Yaro said and now his voice sounded angry.

‘I thought… I thought the offerings are really for the monsters, to keep them away from the gord…
that if they are fed well, they will not attack us…’

‘Lies. Lies to keep people from losing their minds…’, Yaro said, very seriously, but then he started
laughing again. ‘Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad. Losing your mind. Maybe those who do are the only
lucky ones…’

‘Brother…’

‘We can’t stay here, Mara. And we can’t fight the Horror. I told Bolebor that and others agreed.
And you know what? He called me a coward!’, Yaro laughed again, this time bitterly.

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 ‘Where would we go, though?’

‘South. There are no Horrors to the south.’

‘Yaro…’ Mara sighed. ‘Everyone knows those are just tales. No one who went there came back.’

‘Why would they come back, if they are safe there?!’, Yaro got annoyed again. ‘Why risk their
lives for those who didn’t care about them in the first place?!’

‘Brother, you don’t sound like yourself. Please, go and get some proper rest…’

‘I’m sorry, Mara. Please, don’t be mad at me.’

‘Just promise me that you’ll rest?’

‘I promise’.

Mara stood up and left him. She didn’t want to stir him anymore, especially since she had never
seen him so shaken. The Horror must have truly been a gruesome sight. She was actually glad he did
not tell her about its appearance. Her nightmares were bad enough as they were.

The next day her brother stumbled out into the middle of the gord and started shouting at people.

‘We can’t stay here!’, he yelled. ‘We need to go, idiots! There is no way we can fight that Horror!’

‘Calm down, Yaro!’, said one of his fellow warriors, trying to stop him, but Yaro only pushed him
back.

‘We should go south, people! Leave that damned forest behind!’

‘There is no south, Yaro, and there’s no end to the forest’, someone shouted back.

‘Every fool knows that!’, someone else agreed.

The crowd gathered around, irked and curious at the same time. Yaro frowned at them and
eventually reached for his bow. That’s when Mara finally showed up, alarmed by all the ruckus.

‘Who are you calling a fool, huh?!’, he shouted, pointing the unarmed bow’s tip at the forager.
‘Your heads have gone soft from eating all those mushrooms! Can’t you all see? There’s nothing but
death awaiting us here!’

‘This is how life is, Yaro.’ Mara stood up on her toes and saw Bolebor. The elder came forward
and stopped three steps away from Yaro. ‘You can’t fight the Horrors, but you want to fight the gods?’
He shook his head. ‘Leaving the gord is insane. It’s a certain death. Here, at least there’s a chance
some of us will survive’.

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 Yaro laughed out loud, covering half of his face with the other hand.

‘And you call me a coward!’, he said, still laughing.

‘No, Yaro. You’re our hero. You’re just tired, that’s all’, Bolebor continued and reached out to
grab his bow.

‘Stay away’, he warned him before Bolebor managed to do anything. ‘You all, stay away. Move!’,
he screamed and turned around and headed towards the gates. ‘Mara?! Where’s my sister?! Mara!’

‘Yaro!’ Mara wanted to run after him, but somebody grabbed her and covered her mouth.

‘He’s lost it’. Mara recognized Navoya’s low, harsh voice. The clay-skinned scout appeared out
of nowhere, and her grip was so strong one could think she’s a man.

‘Let me go!’ Mara tried to talk and set herself free, but she couldn’t. Carrying corpses made her
strong, but, for some reason, she had lost her strength… something was wrong...

‘I won’t let you die’, Navoya said, and when Mara became all silent and feeble, she lifted her and
carried her away.

‘Mara!’, Yaro called her once again, and after not seeing his sister anywhere, he finally stormed
out of the opened gate and disappeared into the darkness.

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