The website of Allene R. Lowrey
The order was given, and Arring tossed a rope across to the rowboat. Einarr lashed the boats together and pulled himself up onto the old, familiar deck. Grinning broadly, he clasped arms with Arring before turning around to offer a hand up to those who wished for one. “Where’s Father?” He asked as soon as…
With Hrist’s ominous parting words ringing in his ears, it would have been an understatement to call Einarr impatient to return to Kjell. Where before he marveled at the Arkona’s speed, especially for a ship of her size and draft, now it would not have been enough had she been able to fly. He shared…
So far as Einarr was aware, they had only one piece of business left on Hohenwerth. It seemed a shame, to Einarr’s way of thinking, that such a fertile piece of land should be put to flame – but the alternative meant leaving a pocket of corruption to fester like an open wound. It was…
“Launch!” Liupold’s order echoed over the surface of the water. Hrug willed the wind to life in the fire ship’s sails, and as it sailed past Einarr turned to watch Burkhart. The man stalked the deck of the ship, lighting the carefully placed torches. For just a moment, Einarr saw his face clearly. The man’s…
“Do it.” At Einarr’s word, Liupold and Naudrek tossed the bar out of the way and scrambled back over the makeshift palisade. No sooner had they righted themselves, javelins in hand, than the press of bodies forced open the door to reveal a writhing mass of the kraken’s flesh-puppets. They surged into the armory, arms…
The trick with the runes gave them a chance to get out of the dungeon, but they could only do it once. There simply wasn’t time, while dodging the flesh-puppets of a creature whose attention was only now coming to focus on them. Even if there had been time, Einarr was not at all certain…
The woman who stepped out of the cell Liupold opened was tall, lithe, and buxom, with black hair falling to her knees in a thick braid. She wore snug trousers and a swordfighter’s tunic, tied at the sleeves and waist, and if it weren’t for the hay clinging to hair and clothes, the smears of…
The jailer stood in the center of the guard room like a bulldog, as though at any minute he expected intruders to burst in. He also looked significantly healthier than the flesh-puppets they had seen elsewhere in the citadel. He was still alive, plainly, although probably not, Einarr thought, the first to succumb. Not that…
An entire afternoon and evening, and more than one cask of beer (although only one of eisbock: it was rather heady) went into planning their expedition, but in the end the map was the only reliable information they had. For where the corrupted men might be, to where they might be keeping their captives, they…
Hohenwerth island looked like the island of the cult in miniature in many ways, although for the moment it lacked the blackness of that bigger, more northerly island. Steep shale slopes rose from the surface of the water, topped by the green of good farmland and orchards. A sinister silence hung over the area, though,…
