by Jon Kiln
They mounted and charged around the twists and turns across the valley. They came in sight of the rise of the next trail and leaned forward in their saddles.
Berengar’s horse heaved under him and pitched forward. He felt it go over headlong and pushed his hands under himself to spring from the saddle. As the horse tumbled behind him, he vaulted into the air and brought his boots under him. He landed on his feet, but slipped and staggered as he tried to run out the momentum and keep his balance. The captain pitched forward and skid on the hard ground tearing his knees, elbows, and palms worse than he had sliding down the ridge at the Way of Blood.
Nisero circled back as Berengar climbed to his feet. “Captain?”
“I’m fine. We must away.”
Nisero extended his hand and pulled the captain behind him on the single horse. As he circled around, Berengar saw his animal heaving on its side. One of its legs appeared twisted at an improper angle. The captain supposed he had actually ridden the animal to death. While they charged up the trail, he felt bad that they did not take the time to put the animal out of its misery. He was not confident in the mercy of the bandits.
He heard the bandits charging through the valley behind them.
As they took the rise, the captain saw down in a deep chasm that was filled with skeletal remains. Some were animal, but from several of the skulls, he could tell that many of the remains were human. More than a few were from children.
“What happened here?” Nisero shouted as they rode.
“They once were alive just like the rest of us,” Berengar said. “After that, I don’t know.”
As they came toward the fork, Nisero queried the captain. “Which way, sir?”
Berengar tried to tap the feeling of dread to guide his decision, but his feelings of fear and doom were focused behind him, and he had no intention of going back there. With no sense of the correct choice, he called, “Right.”
So that was the way they went.
Chapter 11: The Halls of Death
They rounded another curve of the trail. Nisero looked back to see the vanguard of the bandit horde getting closer. Most of the band that had charged into the strange, gray village was not with this forward pursuit. Maybe they felt comfortable resting and rotating their troops. That’s what Nisero would do. They could also be moving a unit around to a position in front of them, to push them into yet another trap.
“Keep your eyes forward to avoid dumping us off the cliff,” Berengar said in his ear.
The lieutenant turned back around. “We can start a new pile of bones for future travelers.”
The horse’s tongue lulled out of its teeth and its head bobbed as it galloped. Nisero was not sure how much longer the beast could hold out.
They came to another curve and Nisero looked back again. The bandits were fast closing the distance. Even without a trap in front, they would still run down their fatigued horse, forced to carry two riders.
“Nisero, eyes forward before we go over.”
They rounded the rock face, and were out of sight of the bandits. Nisero pulled the horse's head towards the edge and rode him over the side of the trail. The horse pumped its legs to avoid slipping during the slide. Dust kicked into the air and rocks tumbled down the hard slope. Nisero pulled to the side to keep balanced as they descended.
“What are you doing?” Berengar clutched to Nisero’s back.
The lieutenant gritted his teeth, but still laughed. “Suddenly you don’t want to leap from cliffs any longer?”
Berengar growled. “Not when there is a perfectly good trail still in front of us.”
“We were moments from capture. At least now they might miss that we took a detour.”
“Unless we end up crushed on the rocks below.”
“That would be a problem,” Nisero agreed.
The slope turned sheer and the horse leapt. It landed on the next slope, but then crumpled to its knees. Berengar spilled off the back of the horse and slid on his boots. The horse rolled and Nisero pushed off the saddle as well. The men reached the floor of the crag and ran out their momentum. The horse tumbled to its side and snorted.
The hoof beats echoed from above as the bandits approached the curve. The dust still drifted out through the air, so he was worried their escape would be given away. The horse heaved and let out a pained noise. Berengar knelt beside the animal and it snapped its teeth at him. The captain drew his sword.
“How bad is it?” Nisero asked.
Berengar stood. “Badly broken.” The captain felt for a spot along the horse’s neck and then rested the point of the sword there. “Be at peace.” He drove the sword in, and the animal stilled.
The men stood and waited. The horses thundered by above and continued onward. Nisero started to believe they had gotten away with it. He felt guilt at losing another horse as a cost of the ploy.
They might still double back.
“You seem to have made the right choice,” Berengar commended.
“Where from here?”
“Unless you want to try to climb back up, we’ll need to move across.”
Nisero acquiesced. “Forward, then.”
“Do you have a cutting tool besides your sword, lieutenant?”
Nisero looked back at Berengar kneeling beside the body of the horse.
“Like a dagger?”
“Yes, or similar.”
Nisero felt along his belt and found a short bladed knife. It was hidden in its sheath on the inside of his belt, and somehow managed not to be lost in all their tumbles. He drew it and held it out to the captain, pinched between his fingers so that he was offering Berengar the small handle. “It is not much of a weapon, depending on your purpose, sir.”
Berengar accepted it and looked at the keen edge of the blade. “It will do. Has it been used on men, or other purposes that make it unfit for food?”
Nisero narrowed his eyes. “I’ve used it for slicing meat on occasion. I’ve cut cord with it. It has been cleaned well since its last use.”
Berengar nodded and drove it into the horse’s side. Nisero watched as the captain sliced back the skin and cut out sections of the meat. The captain laid out his own cloak and placed the meat on top.
Nisero knelt down and took a turn with the knife as the captain flexed his fingers. They traded back and forth with the work until Berengar paused with the knife in his bloody fingers and said, “I think that is all we can reasonably carry.”
They cleaned up as best they could without water. The captain carried the bundle of his cloak containing the horse meat. Nisero sighed at the thought that they had failed to find skins to fill with water after they found the spring.
He thought about the maddened savages in the ghostly ruins of the village. Their skin had grown as gray as the rock itself, and their minds had slipped from any form of humanity. They had tried to eat the horses as well. Perhaps, Nisero thought, we are on our way to becoming the ashen skinned monsters ourselves.
The fissured base between the Blue Mountains was tougher to navigate than Nisero expected. Dark cracks led down into eternity under them as they climbed over the sharp rocks. More than once they considered the imposing slope leading back up to the distant trails. It had been a while since the band had passed above them, and no follow-up companies had passed since.
They continued on across the rough ground below.
Eventually, they stopped in a small overhang, after minimal progress in a direction that had no meaning to them, other than mostly westward.
They gathered mosses and roots.
“Do we dare a fire?” Berengar asked.
“For the night, I would not recommend it, sir.”
“For cooking.”
Nisero stared at the cloak wet with seeping blood. “Low is the only fire we can attempt with what we have found anyway.”
They found flat ground and sparked a flame. It was more smoke than heat, which was the exact opposite of what they wanted. Nisero watched above and listene
d for hoof beats.
Berengar hung two cuts of the horse meat from Nisero’s knife over the pitiful flame. They ran out of material and the fire grew lower and smokier.
“I’m thinking we are approaching the point of announcing our position, sir.”
Berengar stomped out the fire and the last of the smoke drifted up. Nisero wondered if they were too late.
The meat was warm enough that Nisero thought about the man eating the other horse straight from the living body. The meat was still raw, with scorches around the outside. They ate and settled into their alcove quietly.
The space was tight and they sat shoulder to shoulder and knee to knee.
“I feel I have pulled you into a doomed expedition, lieutenant. I thank you for persevering with me. But I feel I should take this opportunity to apologize for our current state, while we have a moment.”
Nisero sighed. He rubbed at the tender line of cartilage under his nose between his nostrils. He felt the shape of it was off, and the flesh was still swollen. He felt a sting of intense pain and fought the urge to sneeze, which he assumed would hurt far worse.
“We do what we must, sir. We will see this through. I still believe in a victory for our quest, as we know the worthiness of what we do. That makes the suffering necessary and meaningful.”
“We have a worthy share of suffering, indeed,” Berengar said.
They sat silently until they finally found sleep through their pain and discomfort.
***
Nisero was awoken by movement. At first he thought Berengar was trying to get up. He saw morning light through his eyelids. Nisero shifted to let Berengar extract himself, but that was when he felt the pressure of things crawling over him. Something touched his face.
Nisero opened his eyes.
The stiff, furless tail of one of the rats whipped him in the face as it scurried over and around his chest. The rats were larger than any he had seen feeding off the dropped food in castles, or around the cesspits in some of the most crowded villages. These creatures had managed to feed very well in the barren land that was testing Nisero and Berengar.
Nisero cried out and shook the rats off him. Berengar woke and began swiping the rats away from his body as well. The rodents hissed in defiance and snapped their teeth at the men.
Nisero scrambled away. His hands came down on the backs of fat vermin that squirmed under his touch. The captain’s cloak was torn apart, and blood splattered the fur of the rats fighting to devour the horse meat. They fought over pieces of torn flesh until they tumbled down the rock face into the deep cracks together. The pile of rats writhing over one another on the exposed pile of meat was a blob of biting, pulsating flesh.
Nisero clawed at his hair and clothes as he drew his sword. The lieutenant whipped the blade through their bodies, only to have more climb into their place and begin eating the open bodies of the ones that were felled around them.
“Leave them, lieutenant. We cannot win this battle.”
“That’s never stopped us before.”
Nisero was not sure if the captain heard him as they waded away from the infestation and found clear rock farther away from the attack. He shook pellets of feces from the folds of his clothes and cloak. Nisero groaned.
Berengar leapt across a fissure to the opposing slope of rock. “Are you bitten at all?”
Nisero shrugged and followed. “I’m so beaten and battered that it would take me the better part of a week to discover an honest answer to that question.”
Berengar led them onward. Nisero looked back once more at the land claimed by the rats. Their dark shapes pulsed over the rock and spread far wider than he had thought. There had to be thousands. Nisero shivered and looked away.
They found themselves ahead of the deadly fissures and walking over a floor of broken rock, punctuated by sharp chunks of boulders. The ground moistened and Berengar stopped to claw up the smaller pieces of stone darkened by water. He found a gurgle of spring underneath, traveling below the broken rock.
Berengar cupped a handful to his lips. He swished it around and then swallowed instead of spitting it out. “I taste the filter of limestone. This water is cold and comes up from deep. I believe it is fresh and pure.”
“That is quite a change for much of what we have encountered from this cursed land.” Nisero brought a palm full to his mouth and decided he agreed with Berengar’s assessment.
“The land has great potential for natural beauty, were it not working so hard to kill us,” Berengar said. “I imagine it is the people that have turned it into something awful.”
“That seems to be the way of most awful things,” Nisero said. “If we don’t blame our own kind, we must place it at the feet of dark spirits and scaly, winged monsters.”
“Indeed,” Berengar paused to drink again. “Dragons and devils probably upkeep their domains better than what we have done here.”
Nisero took several more swallows until his stomach felt heavy. They had nothing left to hold water, so he figured he’d better take his fill now. He sat back as Berengar replaced him at the spring.
“Now that you are retired and relaxing,” Nisero said, “maybe you should fix the place up in your spare time.”
“Well beyond my abilities and training, I’m sure.”
Nisero saw the captain’s face turn dark and he wondered if he had taken the jesting too far. He may have inadvertently reminded the captain of the shadows that hung over this quest, and his losses that had inspired it. He was going to apologize, but the lieutenant feared it would just make the recollections worse, so he remained silent. They continued along the broken ground.
The rock under their feet crunched with each step. Nisero looked up at the captain, but he was staring at the ground. Nisero thought they were walking over ice again, but the consistency was more slush. The fumes were rising potent from each step and he couldn’t find a way to move his head to get away from the burn of it.
“What is this filth?” Nisero coughed.
Captain Berengar blinked against the tears in his irritated eyes. Nisero saw that Berengar wasn’t whipping his head around to avoid it. “I’m not sure,” the captain replied, “but I wouldn’t drink it.
Nisero groaned and covered his nose with the edge of his clothes. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
They reached a drop-off overlooking a spread of felled trees that extended across the low ground. They were bleached pale and shed of all foliage. Nisero squinted and tried to spy the end of them in the distance. A heavy mist drifted low over the logs out near the horizon.
“Will we be able to cross this over the logs, do you think, sir?”
Captain Berengar licked his lips and then coughed. “I wouldn’t recommend it.”
He pointed down at the low point just below them. Nisero leaned over and looked. A crane sat with its neck bent on the slush between two of the logs. Its feathers were coated with a layer of colorless crystals. The bird’s eyes were gray and empty.
“Is that an ancient thing?”
Berengar shook his head. “I believe it would happen were we to sink our flesh into that tainted water.”
“Have you seen this before, Captain? What manner of poison is this?”
“Something to do with salts,” Berengar said. “There are pools on the eastern border of the kingdom, near where fire belches up from the underworld. Something happens when the rainwater collects in the dying craters.”
Nisero stared at the petrified bird. “Something, indeed. Is this a dying crater from one of those fiery openings?”
“Something happened here, but not a mystery for you, or I, to solve. We need to go higher, if we are going forward.”
They moved to the wall opposite from the side they had come down in their escape from the bandits. The foot and handholds were decent, and they managed to find a continuous ledge across the expanse, heading beyond the graveyard of trees.
Nisero held the wall with one hand to keep from losing his footing. They spent h
ours passing over the dead forest and salty death below. Nisero began to wonder if the ground itself were breaking open to swallow the region, cursing the actions of the kingless people and their bandit lords.
The mist broke under them and they stared up at a collapsed wall above a crumbling cliff. Through the opening, they saw the dark stone of a castle. The edges and battlements were broken and failing.
“Odd place to build a castle,” Nisero whispered on a throat dry from the poisoned air.
“It may have been a nicer place in an earlier age,” Captain Berengar said.
“This would keep out opposing forces,” Nisero said, looking down on the scene below the cliff.
“Would you take these ruins, if you were a bandit king, Nisero?”
The lieutenant shrugged. “Maybe. It does not appear from here that he has.”
“It bears searching, nonetheless.”
They followed their tight ledge around to the castle on the cliff.
Chapter 12: Where Darkness Rules
The ledge had breaks that left dangerous drops to the deadly salt lake below. Captain Berengar made the leaps and held on to keep from plummeting down to become like the petrified crane. He turned and steadied the lieutenant after his jump. As they followed the rock wall up to the ruined castle, Berengar came to believe that this was not the original approach. The primary back entrance must have collapsed along with the floor of the forest, in whatever had changed this land into a poisoned trap.
They came up on the plateau by the back of the dark wall. The ground crumbled and fell away from one of the captain’s boots. He hugged the wall and they worked their way around to the massive break they had seen from across the expanse.
Berengar took hold of the sharp edge where the wall ended. He looked up over the pile of separated block at the dark manor above. He looked back at Nisero who continued to stare up at the structure. He nodded without looking away, and the captain nodded back despite the fact that Nisero wasn’t looking at him.
The captain climbed up the block and over into the patches of tall weeds. The ruins of a smith’s shed hung heavy in the sagging middle. A building near the interior of the protective wall was burned to its shell. Trees grew tall out of the gutted center. Berengar stared hard at it as he thought about the fate of his own home and family. He imagined the burned and aged structure before him had been an armory. Such a thing was fit for attack by an invading force. Berengar saw no honor in burning homes and families.
