by RW Krpoun
“They are,” Provine Sael agreed. “But even finding nothing will eliminate one possible scenario, which still is useful information. We are far from the only group looking into the problem.”
Mounds in twos and threes started dotting the sea of grass as the day wore on, but we did not stop to look at any of them. Hatcher moved to the cart to hold Rose, and then ended up on my shoulders when Provine Sael took the baby.
“I would like to have three, I think,” she said in the midst of a monologue on open-toed shoes.
“Three what?” I asked, trying to figure out what I had missed.
“Babies. Three fat little babies.”
“You can do that?”
She slapped the top of my head. “No, one at a time, silly. Not anytime soon, but when I’ve built up enough of a stake I’ll go home and start a new life.”
For some reason that made me feel sad, but I shrugged it off. “Why three?”
“I don’t know, it just feels right. My mother wants grandchildren in the worst possible way, she’d have them herself if she could.”
“Ahuh.”
“She tells me I’m going to end up waiting until I’m too old to find a husband, but I don’t think so.”
“Ahuh.”
“You could hunt amongst the deaf,” Hunter suggested from behind us. “That would increase your odds.”
From the way she shifted I guessed that Hatcher had turned to make a rude gesture at the ‘slinger. “Mind your own beeswax. Who knows how many bastards you’ve bequeathed to this world?”
“Very few,” Hunter moved up to walk alongside. “The Arts often inhibit fertility.”
“Really?” Hatcher drummed on my head. “What about Provine Sael?” she whispered.
“Wrong sort of Arts,” the Dellian answered from a dozen feet ahead of us. “And your idea of whispering is sadly deficient.”
“What do you think of children, then?” Hatcher was unabashed.
Provine Sael stopped and let us catch up. “I think that I have no business planning a family with a price on my head. And with no husband in sight. But someday I hope to have both a husband and a child.”
“Hunter’s probably willing,” Hatcher snickered.
“Hunter is many things,” Provine Sael noted. “Being husband material is not presently one of them.”
“All I need is a good woman,” the ‘slinger noted, grinning.
“I would say that you would need a truly exceptional woman,” Provine Sael observed.
“Grog and Burk are prime husband material: good listeners, they know how to take orders, and they are thrifty,” Hatcher mused. “Torl wouldn’t, not with his wandering ways.”
“Pieter is already trained,” Hunter grinned over his shoulder at his friend.
“He has pretty eyes,” Hatcher agreed. “And good income potential as well.”
“What we going to do with Rose?” I asked, hoping to get the subject to safer ground. “When we get someplace safe, I mean.”
“I know of several good temple orphanages.” Provine Sael chucked the baby under the chin, and Rose gurgled toothlessly and thrashed her limbs. “I expect they can find her a good home. She’s a lovely little girl.”
“It’s the eyes,” Hatcher agreed. “She’s going to be a heart-breaker.”
“It is far too early for such crass speculation,” Provine Sael shook her head. “Honestly, Hatcher, the things you say.”
“I’m telling you, she’s gonna be a beauty.”
“That is neither here nor there,” The Dellian stroked the baby’s cheek. “A woman should be valued for her mind, first and foremost.”
“Yeah, I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard a man say ‘look at the brain on that one’ ,” Hatcher snickered.
Provine Sael sighed.
“What about you Grog? Burk?” Hatcher clapped her hands. “Marriage?”
Burk just grunted.
“I can’t father children. Seems pointless to marry,” I shrugged.
“You could adopt Rose.”
“I don’t know anything about babies. Or wives.”
“Well, a wife would know about babies, and she would tell you what you need to know about being a husband.”
“I think I’ll just stick with what I know.”
“You have no imagination, Grog. Pieter, what about you?’
“I will wait to consider that until I have mhm a face again.” Provine Sael had been working on his cheekbones and nose area, and the scars there were turning dark.
“In a year you’ll have your pick,” Hunter mused. “There will be a lot of new widows and young women whose beaus followed the battle standards north and never returned.”
“It won’t be over in a year,” Provine Sael sighed. “The Dusmen have committed themselves, and they are stubborn. I fear this will be a long conflict.”
“It’s been a long conflict,” Hatcher pointed out. “The border hasn’t been peaceful since before I was born.”
“This will be a new degree of troubled times,” Hunter shook his head. “The entire Imperial Army is being committed, and their fighting spirit is no less than the Ukar’s. They’ve been waiting for this fight for decades, and the blood is going to flow knee-deep before it is over.”
“Well, it’s here now,” Hatcher sighed. “And we’re gonna get dragged all the way in, I just know it.”
“Trouble’s coming,” Burk said quietly as he folded his cot in the pre-dawn darkness. “I can smell it.”
I was sitting on a provisions box eating a slab of beef that had sat on the grill all night. It was cold and tough, and the fat was burnt at the edges, but a little salt made it all right. “Well, good. Let’s get it over with.”
“Yeah.” He set the folded cot in its hooks on the cart’s side and fastened the straps. “What did Hatcher mean, about us being husbands?”
I tore a piece off the slab with my teeth. “She was just making fun.”
“Yeah.”
I could hear more in his voice. “Look, it was funny because it’s silly. We’re in service to Provine Sael, and if that ends, we’re Red Guardsmen and there’s a war on; I don’t think we’ll get to guard the Emperor, but you can bet we’ll end up in the thick of it. If we survive the war, well, we should check on Master Horne, shore up his starting line-up. We’ve got a lot ahead of us, years worth of stuff. If we survive, that is, which isn’t all that likely; from the books I’ve looked at, those who are at the start of a war seldom see the end.”
“Yeah.” The doubt was gone from his voice.
“Remember: we’re not like the rest of them. We know our place in the world.”
Torl strode up from the darkness. “Where is Provine Sael?”
His abruptness caught me off-guard; Torl wasn’t one for small talk, but he was being much more intense than usual. “She and Hatcher took Rose to have a bath at the stream. Pieter went with them to water the mule and stand guard.”
“Hunter?”
I gestured to the one remaining cot still unfolded.
The scout strode over to the cot and kicked it. “Get up.”
The blankets stirred. “Torl?”
“Yes. Get up.”
“Later. When the mule is hitched.”
Torl kicked the cot again.
“Damn it, I am one second from burning you into your component parts!” Hunter sat up, rubbing his face.
“Get up and tell me something.”
“Why?” Hunter swung his legs over the side of the cot, but made no further movement.
“There’s mist ahead.”
“I’ve seen mist before.”
“Today is a dry, warm morning, and the mist is hanging in one very large spot.”
Hunter moved his hand from rubbing his face to scratching his head. “How big a spot?”
“At least a mile wide, so far as I can tell.”
“How far ahead?”
“Close to three miles.”
“Was it there last night?�
��
“I don’t know for certain; it was full dark when I was near that area.”
The ‘slinger sighed and fished his boots out from under his cot, absently tapping them upside down against the cot frame to dislodge any night visitors. “All right.”
“You want one of us to come with you?” Burk asked, striking his Guardsman pose.
“I don’t need to walk anywhere,” Hunter stood up and stretched. “Point me.”
Torl laid his forearm on top of Hunter’s shoulder, and the ‘slinger shuffled in place until he faced the bladed fingers. “All right,” he smoothed his goatee as Torl stepped back, and, and then made a number of small gestures, muttering under his breath.
I ripped off another bite of beef while Burk rummaged in the bread box.
“Necromancy,” Hunter announced, picking up his harness of pouches from where it hung from the head of his cot.
“I told you, the mist is at least a mile across,” Torl shook his head.
“I thought I just had a headache from the brandy last night,” Hunter changed his shirt and adjusted his clothes. “But that was me feeling it.”
“Stavodrag the Binder, you think?”
Hunter chuckled. “Not in his wildest dreams; he’s a torch at best, and that’s a wildfire eating acres.”
“Torches can start wildfires.”
Hunter shook his head. “Any chance of a warm breakfast?”
“Nope.” I held up my chunk of cold beef. “You’re on your own.”
“Ever since they got the kid,” Hunter shook his head.
“So what can we expect?” Torl asked.
“Trouble; to what degree, I can’t say. I haven’t felt anything like that before, and I’m willing to bet not many others have. I do know there hasn’t been a necromancer powerful enough to burn that kind of power in hundreds of years. My guess is that someone disturbed something in the wrong barrow. You had better stick close; what will be coming for us won’t bother to sneak.”
Torl sighed. “How long ago did they go for their bath?” he asked Burk.
“Not long.”
“They’ll be bathing Rose far longer than it takes either to wash,” Hunter shrugged.
“Can we take a baby into that?” Burk gestured in the direction that Torl had indicated as the scout left in the direction of the creek.
“I doubt it is harmful, but I’ll take some precautions,” Hunter produced a bottle of wine from his pack and flipped the lid off the bread box with the toe of his boot. “What will be dangerous is the sort of things that get their sleep disturbed by that power.” He fished out a round of flatbread.
A short while later Provine Sael, brushing her damp hair into its usual plume, followed a frowning Torl into the camp, Hatcher trailing behind waltzing through the grass with Rose in her arms.
“How bad?” She asked Hunter.
“Worse than a cold breakfast.”
“You know how a skillet works.”
Hunter glanced over his shoulder; in the growing light there was a gray smudge on the horizon. “They uncorked a bottle, is my guess. It will be a different world in the mist.”
Provine Sael nodded once, just a sharp chin-drop. “And it is clearly in our path?” She asked Torl.
“Exactly where we are going, I would bet; from your map most of your search area is in the mist.”
“This feels familiar,” Hunter observed, digging in the bread box.
“It cannot be connected,” Provine Sael raised a hand dismissively. “When you deal with the things of the First Folk, you encounter the dark arts, necromancy in particular.”
“Coincidence and the Arts do not mix.” Hunter tore a round of flatbread into quarters, and offered one to Torl and Provine Sael. Torl took one, but Provine Sael waved it away.
“Hundreds of miles apart.”
“Tombs, undead, the First Folk.” I realized that Hunter was referring to the Emperor’s tomb.
“All three are commonly associated.”
“If you read Marten, there are no coincidences.”
“Marten believes that cultures have an inherent, and ethereal, power to defend their places in the world,” the Dellian shook her head. “I don’t believe that, and I doubt you do, either. The idea that breached barrows would cause an artifact in a sealed tomb to become envenon is...,” she paused. “Well…not impossible, but unlikely.”
I didn’t know what ‘envenon’ meant, but after some thought I figured it could mean ‘active’ if you weren’t educated.
“The Arts are unlikely.” Hunter took a long pull from the bottle. “This group’s composition is unlikely.”
“Whereas you are certainly wearing on my patience. Load the cart,” she addressed that last to Pieter, who was already loading the cart.
“Well, we’ll see.” Hunter stood and eyed the gray smudge. “Perhaps we’re just terribly unlucky.”
“Perhaps we’re just digging in places that are better left undug. There are few joys in seeking treasures among the dead. Only in times this dark can you justify the risks.”
“What about what we just did at the Emperor’s tomb?” Hatcher asked from where she was tucking Rose into her cradle.
Provine Sael sighed. “That was needful. But I rest uneasy at times for having left that staff behind. I had to tell the Emperor the location of the tomb, and knowledge of that sort is dangerous, and best lost to history.”
Chapter Eight
It was soon apparent that the mist ahead was far larger than Torl had initially estimated; it swept away to east and west, boldly defying the summer sun that climbed into the sky as we marched north.
We stopped about a mile short and Torl and Provine Sael studied a map while Hunter drew designs and symbols on Rose’s cradle with a wax pencil.
“Judging from the east-west axis, it very well could encompass the bulk of the Place of Mounds,” Provine Sael tapped the lines burned into the soft leather.
Torl nodded grimly. “What sort of power can do that?”
“Untended power,” Provine Sael rolled the map. “The arts draw energy, same as a fire draws air, and with the dark arts this manifests itself as cold, or rather, an absence of heat. The mist is a natural reaction to an unnatural phenomenon. Someone unleashed something they did not understand, and it is still in play.”
“Much like that staff in the Emperor’s tomb,” Hunter stood up from the cradle. “You could add yours, but anything that can get through what I just laid on the cradle won’t be waiting in the mist for us; it would be out here picking its teeth with our bones.”
“Can you do that to a person?” Hatcher asked, stroking the sleeping baby’s cheek.
“If you were in a box.”
“Great.”
“There’re Tulg scouts lurking about,” Torl noted as Provine Sael knelt by the cradle. “We’ll have to keep the cart and Rose close to hand. It doesn’t look like the Tulg are inclined to enter the mist, but they’ll come close if we leave the cart lightly guarded, and light is all we can leave.”
“The entire group as a group is safer,” Hunter shrugged as he checked the contents of his pouches.
“It is, until you bring an infant into the equation.”
“Like we have a choice,” Hatcher stuck a couple extra throwing axes under the back of her belt. “You ever think about settling down with a family, Torl?”
The scout shot her a grim look and loosened his sword in his scabbard.
We stopped again a bowshot from the edge of the mist so Provine Sael could whisper over the blades of our weapons so that they would destroy Undead; once again she waved aside my sword, but she did do the heads of my javelins. “Hunter, did you examine Grog’s sword?”
“Why would I? He knows more about swords than I ever will.”
“Because his blade is special.”
“That’s right. Well, I forgot.”
“Do so at your next opportunity.”
“I’ll make a note.” He grinned at the Dellian, who igno
red him.
“You want to ride in?” I asked Hatcher.
“No, thanks,” she said, her eyes fixed on the gray wall stretching across our front. “I don’t think that is going to be wise.”
“Stick close to me and you’ll be fine.”
She looked up me, completely serious. “You sure?”
“There’s nothing in there that can kill a High Rate of the Ebon Blades,” I nodded. “Much less two.”
“What if it is already dead?”
I shrugged. “Steel works on Undead, we’ve learned that already.”
“Be careful, Grog; you and Burk are very special to me.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I just shrugged again. “When you engage the Ebon Blades you get quality work, that is the rule.”
“I’ll take the left side of the cart,” Burk said. “You take the right. The others will be in the lead, so we’ll have to keep an eye on the rear.”
I spun the javelin I carried. “Watch your back.”
He nodded, glancing at the mist. “You, too. This will be a serious business.”
“We’re serious enough for anything.”
“That’s for certain.” He paused. “Well...best get in position.”
“Yeah.” For a moment I wanted to say something about…well, I don’t know what. Maybe about how we were the last two of our age block and how I was glad he made this far, but I thought it wouldn’t be proper. I needed to keep my own mind in the right place.
Walking into the mist was strange; one second we were in a summer day with just some fluffy white clouds overhead, and the next we were in a damp, cold, shadow-less world where the sun was an iron-colored disk in the sky. Barrow-mounds made dark shapes in the mist to either side and up ahead, and things were far too quiet; not a bird or bug sounded its call.
“Well, this isn’t right,” Hunter touched his neat goatee thoughtfully.
“No,” Provine Sael was stroking one of her horn nubs. “Nothing should be pulling this much warmth out of the air.”
“If it was, there would be a pillar of fire a hundred feet high somewhere,” Hunter checked behind us. “This sort of power has to go somewhere.”
“The Dusman aura, maybe?” Hatcher asked.
