by Wade Ebeling
Marcus stood Catherine up, washing her from head to foot. Not as an act of depravity, but in the way a devote elderly man might clean his invalid spouse. He showed her the true depths of his love, promising so much without uttering a sound. He even ensured her brand was not getting infected, yet still inflamed and functioning as a source of pain. Turning away to let her dress with some dignity, he quickly scrubbed himself with a brush and the now tepid water. As the sun inexorably sank from view, the light filling the room started to dim. Clothes dried and put back on, the unspeaking, inseparable duo returned to the barracks.
Dinner was a brief affair, workers and patrons filing through a line together and looking to gain distance from one another as quickly as possible. Marcus and Catherine lapped up the broth and returned to their bunk. Sitting upon the new straw stuffing, Marcus ate some of his pemmican and drank blackberry brandy to supplement the lackluster meal, while Catherine nibbled at a piece of hardtack and sneakily sipped on a consumption potion.
Marcus lit a pipe and pulled out the remaining bundles from Master Grenaldt. The smallest of the letters, the one labeled ‘2’, was opened and read. Only two pages long, it started with a thorough explanation of the tunnel that Grenaldt planned to build and what the process would be to gain access to it from the outside. The second page was a blueprint that the headmaster had drawn up for himself long ago. This diagram showed how he constructed the new egress from the Sanctuary, which led from the library over to a crag of stone safely concealed within a thick strand of woods further down the hillside from the stairs. The first list now made perfect sense to Marcus, Master Grenaldt intended for him to return to New London one day to reclaim the accumulation of knowledge that had taken him a lifetime to compile. Marcus, for the briefest of moments, felt honored to be looked upon as worthy of this task. The question of ‘why’ Master Grenaldt felt he needed a new caretaker quickly squelched the sentiment, though. The third and final bundle remained unopened, for a bevy of reasons.
Days of travel down split and rutted roads caught up to them as soon as the lights were dimmed and the German family quieted. It was quite chilly within the wide fieldstone building, so Marcus and Catherine spooned under a thick blanket to keep warm. They fell asleep together, fully dressed and fully spent.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“Wer ist da?”
“Wer ist es?!” a childish voice demanded.
Marcus opened his eyes. It was dark, too dark for his vision to immediately adjust to. His ears perked up to detect bumps in the night. What he heard was the floor boards groaning under the weight of men. The glint of a lone candle then appeared in the open doorway.
The flickering flame moved forward.
The floor boards creaked.
Marcus spun in the bed and sat upright, spreading his feet to brace his weight. The familiar feel of the sling was instantly in hand, a poisoned obsidian shot clutched under tension. Sensing the movement and danger, Catherine stirred, head jutting up after an involuntary shudder. As it came around a support post, the candle illuminated a portion of the upper arm of its carrier and the crossbow the man held in the other hand. It was obviously a Deacon, one that was disturbingly close, just meters away.
Without hesitation, Marcus flung the sling’s pouch around his right hand to begin its arc. Snapping his wrist and releasing the knotted end of the cord, right at the apex, loosed the projectile true. The sling recoiled from the force of the throw, bouncing back and forth before dangling from the finger loop. On a shot of any range, Marcus could guide the stone, while midair, to pinpoint where it impacted. Sometimes, he could even curve the flying spiked nugget enough to strike a target hidden behind slight cover. With the candle holder as close as he was, there was no need. The obsidian shot hit the Deacon in the jaw, shattering into a hundred razor sharp needles that drove deep into bone and flesh. The shocked man dropped the candle and fell to his knees. The flame was snuffed as it landed upside down on the dirty wooden floor, the brass holder breaking the silence as it rattled away. The world sank into darkness once again.
A fleshy smack. The injured man had collapsed, face forward, dead from the poison before he hit.
Twang! Clap! The Deacons, tipped off to his position, had begun to return fire with their compact crossbows. The bolt barely missed Marcus, shattering itself against the wall behind his head.
Anger. Fear. Marcus roared like an animal. Hesitant footfalls. Shouts were issued from across the room in high German dialect.
Twang! Shik.
Catherine painfully grabbed Marcus’ leg, groaning, “The walls!” Without any hesitation, he reached behind to make direct contact with the rounded fieldstones.
Twang!
The building began to shake. Large and small stones alike were magically ripped from the thick walls and hurtled across the darkened space. Loud cracks sounded as the charged stones destroyed wooden pillars or smacked jarringly against adjacent walls. More and more stones flew, coming from all directions. The noise almost deafening, the structure now yelling louder than the occupants trapped inside it. Portions of the roof caved inward when the supports finally crumbled.
Needing a quick escape, Marcus knew just what to do. He stood and grabbed Catherine’s arm, who briefly resisted his attempts at getting her up. As it was tossed aside, the heavy bed felt light to his adrenaline-charged arms. Stepping on the corner of his coat reminded him of where his backpack was. He grabbed the coat before hanging the canvas pack over one shoulder. Retrieving Catherine’s belongings, he shoved them at her in the darkness. She slowly grabbed the items, hooking her hand through the case’s handle, hissing when Marcus let the weight transfer to her.
Someone howled in agony behind them, the unnatural noise very distressing to behold.
Marcus did not have time to ponder the sounds. The far walls had begun to give way, and he figured they only had moments to live. His hand dove into the leather pouch, coming out with a trenching potion. Unstopping the glass vial with a thumb, he splashed the liquid on the wall in a vertical stripe. The stone and mortar gasified with a strange sucking sound, the affected material falling to the floor a moment later in the form of a powder. This created a narrow portal to the outside. Marcus smashed a smoke potion on the ground and charged through the opening, pulling a stumbling Catherine along with him. Dense white smoke billowed out from every crack of the collapsing building, covering their escape momentarily.
Once free of the smoke, the waning moon felt like a spotlight. Paranoia kept the couple moving past the corrals and across a mucky field. When they reached the wood line west of town, Catherine begged him to hold up. Marcus chastised her with his tone when he replied, stating what a bad idea he thought it to be. The more she struggled to yank her arm away from him, apparently to take a quick respite, the harder he held her wrist and the faster he went. Deeper and deeper they went into the unfamiliar landscape.
Catherine, in an act of great exertion, kept pace, despite the trail of blood tracing out behind her.
CHAPTER 6
~ The River ~
Marcus and Catherine trudged through the dark, cold woods for nearly an hour and a half until daybreak. The rushing sound of a flowing great volume of water could be heard after they crested a sandy mound and exited a strand of pines. The morning was starting out bright and reasonably warm, making them disregarded the dark, ominous clouds looming in the distance. Marcus left Catherine panting on a small outcrop of bedrock to investigate what lie ahead of them. Almost immediately after stepping into a bed of reeds, Marcus found himself ankle deep in water. He checked upstream and down for a dryer path forward, without success.
By the time he returned, the sun was in full view over the hill behind them. What the daylight revealed shook Marcus to the core. Catherine lay in an unconscious heap, face as pale as freshly drawn milk. Hers eyes and lips were curdled into a mask of agony, and tendrils of drool sagged freely from her mouth. While these horrible features scared Marcus, what he found most disturbing were the
swipes of blood that stained the rock where ever she had touched it. A dark patch blemished the sky-blue coat around her right abdomen, the numerous layers she wore hiding its origin.
Dashing over to his love, Marcus tried to rouse her. Head lolling around limply, she started groaning rhythmically. He gently moved Catherine onto her back, then took off his backpack to place it under her head. Opening the bloodstained coat, he saw white feathers sticking out of a wound just under her right ribcage. He stared at them dumbly for a moment. His taxed brain finally registered what he was seeing as the fletching of a crossbow bolt. Turning her away, he felt around for an exit wound. While he found no blood, Marcus could feel the sharpened tip bulging the skin near her spine.
The Deacon’s crossbow bolt, slowed by the thick clothing, had hit at a slight angle, so the entirety of its six-inch length was buried inside her torso. From its position on the body, and from the bright arterial nature of the blood slowly seeping out, Marcus guessed that her liver had been pierced. This meant internal bleeding, sepsis and a slow death. Marcus marveled at how Catherine had stayed on her feet for as long as she had without making a single complaint. Finding himself mad at her for not mentioning the injury earlier, Marcus did the only thing he could think to do, he slathered the entry wound with healing salve. While this stopped the flow of blood escaping, he knew it would do little for the unseen damage below the surface.
If they were at the Stone Sanctuary with its vast stores of medicinal ingredients and supplies, there was a chance that she might pull through. One potion in particular would be most useful, a clotting solution made from fresh Thion Hudor and a fermentation of blue penicillium, as it would put a stop to the internal bleeding and prevent infection. Called Aqua Vitae, it was taught in theory only. The combination of pure sulfur flowers, strong mold and slaked lime, while being both a powerful coagulant and antiseptic, degraded at such a high rate that application needed to be almost instantaneous. In other words, it would take several hours to purify the necessary ingredients down to a point where combining them would then produce the desired results, giving mere minutes before the potency expires, making it unviable to store for later use.
As it were, Marcus had no penicillin, no sulfur and no lime. Standing on the bank of a river in the middle of the wilderness, producing such a potion seemed impossible, even for a skilled alchemist such as him. Marcus paced around in a small area in front of the boulder, trying desperately to think of answers to several complications at once. Pulling the map out, he estimated their position to be somewhere west of Fishkill, along the eastern shoreline of the Hudson River. This put them moderately close to one of the more crucial towns in New York, that of Newburgh. An enclave of this size just might hold the keys to saving Catherine. If he could keep her alive long enough to cross the river, make it into town unseen, manage to find all the required components then somehow refine them, Catherine just might have a chance. Just thinking about the multitude of problems made Marcus realize how slim of a chance it was.
It was a complete mystery how the Deacons had pursued them this far. Given their tenacity, Marcus had to expect that they would not give up now. Moreover, he had to assume that the Camaraderie figured out roughly where they were going. This made every obvious move from here on out a dangerous one, making going to Newburgh almost suicidal. All roads heading west of the river departed from either there or New Winsor, a few dozen miles to the south. This alone effectively made it a natural choke point for any pursuers wanting to set a trap for them.
Catherine woke briefly while Marcus debated all of this. She rambled nonsensically, even a bit angrily, about not wanting to be woken. After this, just before sinking into oblivion again, she complained of being cold. This was all it took for Marcus to decide. He felt guilty for dragging her incessantly through the forest last night. He felt fear about losing the only person he had ever loved. He felt rage at the bastards who had hurt her. Most of all, he felt responsible.
Instead of letting the panic rise, hard years at the Sanctuary ensured that his training and education came forward. The ‘History of the Builders’ classes taught that ancient megalithic societies once demonstrated their power by showing what a group of like-minded people could achieve. Dozens of wizards would excavate the largest chunks of solid stone they could manage, each member taking up a portion of the massive weight as it was then floated across the ground, sometimes for many miles, before being positioned alongside previous displays. Some cultures would chant or sing during the transportation of these giant stones, leading to the misconstrued belief by some onlookers that vocal power accomplished the feat. Whether these early civilizations built the beginnings of defensive walls, entire cities or ornate pyramidal temples, the sentiment was always the same: these edifices were for the benefit of all mankind, not just those with the ability to construct them.
This premise of practiced altruism was both a blessing and a curse for the outlying areas. Undeniably, the people benefited immensely from the knowledge of mathematics and architecture that the Builders shared, even as it inevitably became the reason why these same societies failed. As ever larger structures were created, it allowed for ever increasing populations to flourish within them. Once these new metropolises were finished, at least to a point where they could sustain hundreds or even thousands of people, the fallibility of man always took over. There will always be those that harbor a desire for absolute power. Unsatisfied with their current station, they use the skill of persuasion to gather the commoners around them, slowly turning them against the secluded Builders.
By whatever means these illegitimate claimants to power managed to sway public opinion, the resultant revolts had but two ends. Sometimes, the Builders would destroy the great works that they had toiled over, scattering the populace back into a life of savagery. While at other times, the usurpers would manage to wipe out the Builders, only to find out shortly thereafter that they could not maintain the complicated infrastructure without them. It was in these cases where starvation and lack of potable water soon created huge ghost cities.
While Marcus did not have the other members of the Builders standing behind him, he did have ignorant usurpers chasing him. He had his knowledge of the past, which might be used to gain an advantage. Chased from his home, Marcus now possessed one of the most potent causes a man could ever hope to fight for. Catherine Halsworth was that cause. Love was that cause. It was to her limp form that the true measure of his power would be shown.
Looking meaningfully at Catherine, Marcus let his clouded emotions coalesce into determination. Removing the crossbow bolt now would just speed her demise so, instead, he covered her with his great coat and kissed her gently on the cheek, pleading with her not to die. Catherine reacted to the warmth of his lips, rolling and pulling her knees up. She was still breathing, still fighting.
Marcus smacked his raw brand several times, relishing in the rush of pain and immeasurable strength. More energy flowed through him than ever before. With just a light touch, the base that Catherine lay upon cracked and crumbled. She rose into the air as a thin shard, one just bigger than her curled body, split away from the boulder. Gripping the hovering chunk, he deformed the properties of the stone even further. The edges curled up and thousands of air pockets formed internally. Ever so gently, he moved the altered slab forward and set it into the shallow water. As if in reaffirmation of his plan, not only did the porous stone float stably, Catherine opened her eyes.
“Where are we? Did I fall asleep?” Catherine whispered dreamily.
“Don’t move, … dear.” Marcus hoped she did not mind the new moniker. “Just rest. Try not to jostle your side. Why’d you not say anything? I mean, you were bloody shot! I would have stopped. I didn’t know! If I had, we …”
“We had to … had to keep going. I think I lost my suitcase ... somewhere in the woods. Don’t be angry with me. Didn’t want to say anything … You were amazing, by the way. Never seen anything like that before … I’m so tired,” Ca
therine said with a great shudder. “Are we safe?” She tried to sit up and look around after saying this, cursing at the pain which shot through her.
“We are, Katie. We are. Don’t worry about the suitcase, or those bloody crosses. No way they could have tracked us during the night … Just lay back down. Please … C’mon, lay your head back,” Marcus said, trying to be as reassuring as possible. “Just relax for a bit. Take a sip of these … need to keep your energy up.” Marcus tipped small amounts of the consumption tonics into her mouth, glad to see her swallow them down. He reapplied the healing salve before covering her the best he could.
She must have been reading the concern written upon his face, because she willed a more cogent tone to her voice while saying, “That feels much better all ready. Thank you, my love. I feel I owe you an explanation … I want you to know.”
“Know what? I know how you got hurt! Those bloody crosses! I swear … Truly, I swear to you, if I ever see those … Oh, God! That poor family … I didn’t even think about them. I brought that whole place down …”
“Calm yourself, Marcus. You did your best. They were against the wall in the other corner. Remember? You were aiming for those … bastards in the middle of the room. If they stayed down, I’m sure they will be fine,” Catherine lied. Wanting to keep his mind from forming the worst of the possibilities. She quickly added, “I thought we were done for. You found a way outta there for us … somehow. Truly, you were magnificent. That’s not what I want to talk about, though.”
Catherine composed herself briefly. Finally, she looked Marcus in the eye and stated, “I was working inside the Camaraderie Bastion. The one in Boston ... That’s where I have been. Master Grenaldt sent me there. Well, he sent me to go … apply my wares … at a notorious house of ill-repute. This is what it will be called, shall we say? Anyway, this establishment was one known to be frequented by members of the clergy.”
