by J. Thorn
As if in answer, he reached the top of the rise and looked down the slope to where the old blacktop road led, and saw half a dozen figures heading toward them. They were three, maybe four, miles away but clearly visible. He stopped, squinting in the bright sun to clear his vision, to make sure that he wasn’t seeing ghosts, but the group was still there.
Declan waved his arm at those behind him, and moments later Ghafir arrived at his side.
“I didn’t think anyone would be out this way,” Declan said, pointing at the approaching group.
Ghafir frowned. “No, not usually,” he said. “The lands and forests further up the slopes tend to be empty of prey until the thaw has come and the animals travel once more.”
“Do you recognize them?” Declan asked.
“No,” said Ghafir. “They’re not plains folk. Too heavily dressed for the cold.”
“Refugees from the city, maybe,” Rav stated, and Declan noticed the man was standing behind him. A few yards behind him the other Elk warriors gathered. “Maybe they left Eliz before us, but after the grumbles and the collapse.”
Declan nodded. “Maybe, but then why are they coming back this way?”
Ghafir took his bow from his shoulder and notched an arrow. “Maybe we should find out,” he said and began to stride along the road toward the approaching group.
* * *
Briar stopped the hunter group in the middle of the road, raising his arm and signaling the approaching warriors.
Loner stopped a dozen feet behind Briar, and he looked to the side of the road. There was no cover for several hundred yards. “What we do?” he asked.
“We speak to them,” Briar said. “They come from the direction of Eliz, so they are probably not our enemies.”
“You hope,” said Loner.
Briar smiled and gripped his bow tighter. “If they want trouble, they’ll not get close without losing half their number.”
The warriors from Eliz approached, slowly and cautiously, and Briar could see several of them also carried bows. He raised his hand in parlay, indicating that he wished only to speak to them.
“You come from the city?” he called.
Declan nodded. “Yes,” he said. “You?”
“We’re hunters from the North Mountains,” said Briar. “Are you of Eliz or a migrating clan?”
Declan shifted uncomfortably, unsure of how much to tell the stranger.
“We come from the North Forest,” Rav said. “Past the wide hill.”
“Then you will want to know that we think these lands behind us,” Briar lifted his hand and gestured toward the forest in the distance, “and toward the west, are being occupied.”
“By who?” Declan asked.
“Strange folk,” said Briar. “We haven’t met them before. Also there has been a sundering of the land not far from here, half a day’s travel, maybe. The land is split.”
“You mean the great breach that splits the land further up in the hills?” Rav asked
Briar turned to older man, appearing surprised. “You already know, yes. But it’s worse than that. The breach, as you call it, comes all the way down here to the river and the bridge, and it passes under the bridge and continues right out into the southlands for as far as I could see. Thirty miles, at least.”
Rav looked at Declan, concerned. “This could be shitty for us,” he said.
“We have travelled for three days down the mountain,” Briar continued. “And over fifty miles now, and still there is no sign of the end to the breach.
Declan cursed, but Ghafir stepped forward. “Does the bridge stand?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Briar. “It has not fallen into the void. But that is not our only problem. My clan comes from the North Mountain, east of where your Elk and clans of Wytheville are. We live higher up. For four days before the grumble we were pursued by strangers across the mountainside and into the woods. Most of them died when the ground broke open, either fallen into the hole or killed by wolves. But then we travelled along the ravine, southward until the blacktop, and when we reached the bridge we found another warband there.”
“More of them?” said Declan. “There shouldn’t be any large clans left up there. Everyone’s at Eliz.”
“They are, I think, of the same people as the ones who chased us. They wear the same strange garb that I did not recognize. And this second group were blocking the other side of the bridge.”
“You didn’t recognize them,?” asked Declan.
“No,” said Briar. “I’ve not seen their kind before.”
“Cygoa?” Rav suggested
Briar looked puzzled and shook his head. “I do not know that word.”
“They’re from the far, far north,” said Rav “and we’ve had little contact with them for over a decade or more. Only the northernmost forest clans have seen any signs of them for a long time. But the Elk encountered a warband of theirs a few months ago.”
“They wear long coats and dark fur, with masks that hid their faces,” said Briar. “They also carry strange weapons.”
Rav turned pale. “Yes, that’s them,” he said. “Damn it.” He looked sick.
“Who are the Cygoa?” Declan asked. “No one explained that to me when we fought them.”
“That’s a long story,” said Rav. “Let’s just say they come from the far north, and that they aren’t our friends. They have a history with most of the forest and Eliz tribes. I’ll tell you more about them when we have time.”
“We need to go check out the bridge and see what they are up to,” Declan said.
“Yes,” Rav agreed, “but if the Cygoa have come south, then our troubles are far greater than a mere split in the land or the collapse of buildings in Eliz.”
Chapter 59
Gaston looked back several times in the first few hours after leaving White Citadel. He gazed through the low, hazy clouds of late winter and above the bare trees scratching at the sky. The air tasted moist and sour, as if the coming rain would drench the land but not initiate the change of seasons.
The men walked. There were only men left now; the last woman succumbed to the sickness that morning. The clan kept moving. Gaston never paused to reflect or read a passage from the book. They walked on, leaving the last woman’s body at the side of the road.
Gaston had sensed a forced patience in them. They believed him, and they wanted a vial of their own; a magical concoction that would halt or prevent the blight. They knew they needed it to live and yet the travels might kill them first. Gaston eventually stopped looking back at White Citadel and began scanning the horizon for signs of an ambush. He had spent most of his life on the ancient brittle roads of the old world, and he understood how tantalizing a tiny band of stumbling, weak men would look to thieves. His men were too sick to defend themselves. Gaston knew if the fight came, he would die defending himself. He had lied about the vial in order to get them to walk to Wytheville, in hopes the numbers alone would be enough to deter a potential attack.
A branch snapped fifteen yards to Gaston’s left. He saw the other men look up and turn their tired eyes toward the noise.
“Someone is following us,” one of the men said.
Gaston raised his hand and placed a forefinger against his lips. He stared hard into the forest, where the twisted spines of trees dangled above the edge of the road. They had not seen any signs of life for hours, and Gaston knew why. The sickness, the blight, had crept outward from its invisible source at White Citadel. It killed all with a silent, deadly hand.
“There is nothing alive in these lands. Not even us.”
Gaston stared at the man who spoke and realized they had moved beyond fear. They were the walking dead, while he still clung to the hope of a new life in Wytheville or beyond.
Another sound came from the trees, a rustle amongst dead leaves on the ground. Gaston squinted and saw the chunky, thick body of a groundhog. It reared up on its hind legs and stared at Gaston.
It fears no man because it
has never seen one.
“Something lives,” Gaston said, ending his weak dictate of silence. “Do we have a bow?”
He saw a split second image of Seren in his mind before another man spoke and pulled Gaston’s attention from both the groundhog and Seren’s bow.
“Look.”
Gaston turned left and saw the man pointing at the horizon, where the road unfurled to Wytheville. Barely visible in the late-afternoon daylight was a dark grey line, crawling up into the sky. At first, Gaston believed it to be an optical illusion, like the shimmering air that hovered above the old road during mid-summer days. But as he let his eyes adjust to the light and distance, he saw that it was real. Spires of dark smoke rose from beneath the edge of the earth—from Wytheville.
“What is it?” another man asked.
“The gods burn the wicked to the ground,” came the reply from another. “I will walk no more.”
Gaston heard the men grunt and then the roadway became silent with the absence of their footfalls.
“We must keep moving,” he said to the clan. “Those are settlement fires—camps. We need to get to Wytheville. For the vials. For you.”
Gaston waited while the men looked at each other. Several coughed bloody phlegm while others scratched sores until they bled.
“Death is behind us, in front of us, and also standing on the road with a vial around his neck.”
Gaston reached beneath his cloak and felt the worn, familiar leather of the book. He removed it and flipped through the pages. The musky smell of the paper masked the men’s aromatic decay.
“Here,” he said, moving his finger down the page to a passage marked with a crudely-drawn star. “This is what you must hear.”
A man groaned, and Gaston looked up, unable to tell if the suggestion of a reading caused it or if it was the blight eating the man from the inside out. Nevertheless, Gaston looked down again. He drew a deep breath and let his eyes focus on the words that had been blurred by decades of handling.
“I shall fear no man or beast as I walk the road of the gods. I will grip my weapon and raise my head, unafraid of that which the universe puts in my path. For those who step forth to take their destiny will own it, while those who succumb to weakness will indeed fall. For so it is written, and so it shall be.”
Gaston snapped the book shut and a puff of dust rose from the pages, making his eyes water. He shoved the tome back beneath his cloak and looked at the men standing before him on the road. Gaston counted ten; twenty eyes glazed over and bloodshot from seeing their inevitable death at the hand of the sickness. He began to wonder if the passage had any meaning to them at all. Gaston felt for the short dagger tucked inside his shirt. They would most likely kill him, but he wouldn’t die without a fight. As he felt the sweat break on his forehead, the man closest to him spoke.
“We have followed you this far. We die on the road or we die at Wytheville if you lie. Either way, we have nothing more to lose, nothing to risk. But you, great chieftain, you seem unaffected by the sickness and therefore that smoke over Wytheville could be your undoing.”
He couldn’t have known. The man had no way of knowing what had caused the smoke on the horizon. He could not have read Gaston’s mind and known the fear he contained around the thoughts of the Cygoa and that clan pushing south. Gaston decided it was impossible. The man spoke based solely on what he saw; he had no special powers of perception or prediction.
“It is your only chance to survive. I care not for my own safe—”
“Shut your lying fucking mouth and walk,” the man said to Gaston. “And if that settlement still stands, and there are no vials, you will not survive either.”
Gaston started walking again, ignoring the man’s threat and focusing on the smoke spreading into the sky like oily water.
Could it be Cygoa? Are they here already?
He decided it would not matter. He could not stop or turn back. In a half-day’s travel, the smoke would no longer be a mystery. Gaston hoped the men would die on the road before they reached Wytheville and the false promise of their salvation.
Chapter 60
The smoke pillars above Wytheville could no longer be mistaken for anything but the evidence of occupants. The orange bursts of the setting sun cut through the low-hanging clouds and the wind blew from the west, pushing at Gaston’s back. He pulled his collar tight and looked around at the remnants of the Elk clan who had turned their back on Jonah to follow him to White Citadel.
Gaston counted eight. He could not remember losing two more men on the road, and he was not entirely sure if he had. They had remained silent while keeping their feet moving, plodding toward Wytheville and what they believed to be their only hope. Gaston felt the glass vial on his chest. He would have to face the lie soon, and Gaston hoped the men would be too weak to rage against him.
“How long?” The question broke the silence, the first words spoken in the past few hours.
“You can see it like I can. Judge for yourself,” said Gaston.
The man groaned, and others hissed at Gaston’s curt reply. A branch snapped and the men turned to face the forest creeping up to the edge of the road. They had walked all day, but Gaston was not surprised that they would start to see other signs of life again, the blight’s reach lessening the farther they got from White Citadel.
“If it is another hog, it is mine,” said one man.
Another branch snapped, and this time the men froze, recognizing the harsh brittle sound of dead wood beneath a boot. Gaston turned to face the forest, the waning light casting long shadows on the cracked pavement. He peered into the woods, his eyes shifting back and forth. The sounds of footfalls on dead leaves came, the invaders no longer concerned about cloaking their movements.
“Don’t move.” The command came from the woods and Gaston stopped. The other men did the same.
At first, it appeared as though the tree trunks had opened and dispensed creatures from within. The shapes stepped from the shadows, their long cloaks behind them like black wings. Gaston looked hard, and his eyes saw the first details of the masks on the invader’s faces. The ancient, worn coverings had been adorned with gems and strange markings, and some were lined with human hair. One mask had glass lenses over the eyes while another used thin bone slivers to cover the opening over the mouth.
Cygoa.
Gaston shivered and took a step back toward White Citadel, almost hoping the blight would creep up and take him on the spot. The Cygoa warriors emerged from the trees, a scouting party of fifteen or twenty men. They wore ceremonial war masks and carried weapons scavenged from the ruins. Gaston smelled tobacco and animal hides on them as they circled his band of survivors. All of the men stood still, the Cygoa surrounding them.
“We have nothing of value. These men have the blight. They need wares sold at Wytheville to save them.”
The Cygoa warrior closest to Gaston laughed, the sound muffled and wet beneath his mask. He turned his head toward Gaston, revealing a worn, black leather mask with a zipper up the left side of his face. A star had been burnt into the forehead and what appeared to be human teeth dangled from a rawhide string attached to the right side of it.
“Who are you?”
Gaston looked down. He realized someone would recognize him soon enough, and it didn’t much matter if it was this scouting party or the Cygoa force now at Wytheville. There would be members of the Cygoa who would remember Gaston as one of their own, banished all of those years ago.
“Speak up or we’ll kill all of you right now. Tis the way of the road, as I’m sure you know.”
Gaston held his tongue, unsure what to say and how much to share. He had wanted to use the dying men to get to Wytheville, but they provided as much protection as the fading daylight. Now, he was close enough to see the smoke pillars from the camps but there was no doubt the settlement was occupied by Cygoa.
Gaston felt paralyzed, as if he no longer had control of his own fate. For a moment, he thought about attack
ing the Cygoa scouting party—accepting his death as he would eventually have to. But then he thought of Jonah, the Elk, and their eternal struggle with the Cygoa, and in that moment Gaston decided it was an opening worth exploiting.
“My name is Gaston.”
Two of the dying men collapsed to the ground, no longer having the strength to stand or the momentum to keep moving forward on the road. The others looked at Gaston and then at the Cygoa warriors.
“The preacher from the North Lake?” the Cygoa leader asked.
Gaston nodded.
The wind hurled leaves down the road and the last vestiges of sunlight slid from the sky. The Cygoa warriors stood their ground, silhouetted like the massive, dead trees behind them.
“Are these Elk?”
“No,” said Gaston immediately. “The Elk abandoned them—abandoned us. We are our own clan, and we are sworn enemies of the Elk.”
Gaston had never quite been that explicit in his explanation of the fracture of the Elk clan, and he knew his decision to split from Jonah was not as dramatic as he made it sound, but he continued anyway. “We just want to walk the road to Wytheville.”
“This is our road,” said the Cygoa leader.
Gaston felt the circle of men tighten as the Cygoa scouting party closed in without a verbal command from their leader. The sick men looked at Gaston, and he could feel their hatred even though it was too dark to see it on their faces.
“You’re coming to Wytheville, that is certain,” said the Cygoa leader. “Leadership will then make its decisions.”
“Then what happens?” Gaston asked.
“How should I know?” the warrior asked in return. “Maybe the answer is in that fucking book you’ve been carrying around all this time, preacher.”
Chapter 61
Morlan stood upon the highest battlement, facing east and watching the snow slowly retreat from the fortress. From his vantage point, some eighty feet from the ground, there wasn’t much he couldn’t see. Below the ruins, the remains of Wytheville spread out for a mile or so before being swallowed by nature. Up until that morning all of that nature had been covered with a blanket of thick white snow, but now gaps were appearing.
