by Welcome Cole
“Don’t… don’t start lying to me, now, brother. Ye… ye know how… how dearly I loathe liars.”
“Rest, Grae. Stop wasting your breath.”
“Hoo, I’d be hearing same sentiment all me life, ain’t I?” His wheezy laugh rounded up a barrage of wet coughs.
Chance adjusted the blanket under Graen’s head. Then he laid his open hands on either side of the Watcher’s chest and carefully probed his ribs through his leather shirt. “Just do as you’re told for once,” he said as he worked, “Save your strength. Let me do the talking.”
Graen yelled out as Chance found the wound, then threw another series of coughs. Fresh blood glazed his lips. “Ah, gods above!” he said, gasping for air, “I’m dying, Chance! I’d be taking me leave of further bloody sunrise.”
“Take it easy, Graen,” Chance said as he assessed the trouble spot. The man’s right chest was swollen and hot. It spoke of badly broken ribs. “You’re not going anywhere. The heavens won’t have you, and the hells don’t deserve you, so you’ve got no place to go. You’re stuck with us.”
“Aye, that… that be the gods’ own truth,” Graen whispered. Then his eyes eased shut and he fell limp.
Chance looked at Friss kneeling beside him. “What happened?”
“Prodyths,” she whispered, “Left Graewind three days past to find ye, didn’t we? We’d not put more than few miles to trail when vile bastards attacked Graewind and town below. Thousands of the bastards, weren’t there? Thick as coal smoke, they were. Monsters killed everyone, even whole of bloody Baeldonian cavalry.”
“What did you say?” Wenzil said.
She looked over at him. “Aye, ye hear me true, dear runner. Ghanter Soolen Vicker’s cavalry be camped on grounds outside Graewind. Bloody prodyths murdered them, part and parcel. Graen went down to investigate after said prodyths fled. Told me not to go down after him, he did, but I went anyway, didn’t I? And don’t I wish to this very sorry minute I hadn’t done as much? Them piteous bastards! Bodies and faces wretched to look upon, all twisted up and swollen. Gods above, they faces be twisted in terror, like they be scared free of they very souls. And quills! Bloody quills be everywhere! Everywhere!”
“Walk away from it, Friss,” Chance said as he examined Graen, “We’ll talk about that later. Grae wasn’t wounded by prodes. What happened to him?”
Friss smudged away the fresh tears. “After that, we rode northwest for hatch. By good Ghant’r Vicker’s words, we figured best to find ye soonest. But, the gods be scowling down on us. Weren’t no escaping said monsters. Miserable bastards be prowling everywhere. Flying in formation, for pity’s sake. Looked like buzzards, ye see? Forced us to weave across countryside, riding high, low, and all hells in between.”
Chance glanced around the shadowy faces circling him. Each set of eyes were dark and focused. Her fear wasn’t wasted on them; they’d experienced it themselves. They shared her terror.
“Wasn’t less than three of them fell on us yesterday,” Friss continued, “Three bloody prodyths! I cannot even say where in hell’s hope they be coming from! I was scouting ahead a ways when I hear Graen yelling, yelling like he be falling off earth itself. Monsters swarmed him, didn’t they? He swatted them back with sword as best able, but not enough skill be found in sorry effort, not by a sweet dream.”
“But neither of you caught a quill,” Jhom said.
“Nay, no quills. Killed two fairly straight off. Last one chased Graen halfway across bloody plains. Finally, Cabbal,” she looked over at Mawby and Wenzil, “That’d be his horse, ye know. Cabbal. Well, the poor beast be catching misplaced gopher rut. Went down hard, didn’t he? Graen took last demon’s head as he fell, but at expense of calculated landing. Fell hard on his sword hilt, didn’t he? I heard them ribs cracking from dozen feet off.”
Chance looked up at the sky. The last muddied rays of the sun had been efficiently snuffed out by the eager night, and in that moment he wanted nothing more than to just drop to the grass and never get back up. He felt exhausted, exhausted and beaten damned near into retreat. How could they ever fight back against creatures as vile and soulless as prodes and demons?
“Needs be ye help him, Chanyth. By Calina’s love, ye must. He’s me dear brother.”
Chance looked at her. The light of the rising moon set her green eyes glowing so that they shimmered against her dark skin like stars in a ruddy sky. They were soft and beautiful, and wholly deceiving. The truth was she was tottering at the threshold of a black and sorry doorway, and if she passed through it, she’d be as much a threat as the prodes. Her temper wasn’t one easily reasoned with. They had to move, had to get to a safer place, a place where they could all find some sense of safety and normalcy.
“I can’t do anything out here” he said as he looked off into the darkening south, “I’m confident he’s ripped a lung. I’ll have to cut him, and I’m damned well not doing that in the dark. Besides, we’re targets out here. We’re too exposed. We need to move him.”
Friss’s face flushed. She began to speak, but he pushed his hand firmly over her mouth.
“No,” he said sternly, “Rein it in, you hear me, Friss? You keep it lidded. I know you’re angry, and gods know you’ve every right to be. But right now, the entire party’s in peril. None of us will be any good to Graen with prode quills in our backs. There’s an abandoned farm south of us. We’re moving out. Right now, I need your help, not your temper.”
∞
Chance carefully groped his way down to sit on the fieldstone hearth. His back sang him a chorus of aches as he settled into position beside the fire. Yet, once he was actually sitting, that cold, coarse fieldstone felt as sweet as a rocking chair. He’d forgotten how much he loathed horses.
Jhom squatted next to him, sprinkling fire-dried field sage over a triad of rabbits simmering on a skewer over the fire. The light of the flames danced warmly across his broad face. As he worked his culinary magic, he kept one great eye on Chance. And though he was grinning, Chance saw the truth through the facade. The tension gripping his eyes told a story quite contradictory to the lies of his smile. Despite his chronic criticism of such behavior, Chance knew Jhom was every bit as possessed by worry as he was.
Jhom sliced off a sliver of rabbit. It was half-cooked in proper Baeldonian style. “Here,” he commanded, holding the knife out to Chance, “Eat something.”
The smell of the meat soured Chance’s stomach. “No,” he said, waving it away, “I’ll eat later. See to the others first.”
Jhom kept the meat suspended between them. “You’re skinny as a wormy goat. Eat something.”
“I said no.”
“It’s not a request, Chance.”
The knife and rabbit showed no sign of retreat, and though he had no appetite for it, he knew Jhom would get more satisfaction from watching him eat than Chance would get from eating it. Instead of pressing his resistance further, he took the greasy meat from the knife and bit off a piece.
“That’s more like it. I knew you needed a mother.”
As he chewed, Chance had to admit the food felt pretty agreeable going down. He couldn’t remember the last thing he’d eaten. Jhom again offered him the knife with another slice pinned to it. As Chance reached for it, he caught a look at his hand in the firelight. His skin was dark and shiny from the fingers to the wrist. It was Graen’s blood, the badge of a good deed performed in vain.
Jhom noticed it, too. “Wouldn’t kill you to wash up, either,” he said as Chance removed the bite of rabbit.
Chance pushed the meat into his mouth, then leaned his head back against the stones as he chewed. “Yeah,” he said as he rolled the small of his skull against a particularly rounded stone, “I’ll get right on that.”
Jhom poked at a couple tubers roasting on stone before the fire. “Ah, these are nearly done as well. I don’t know how that savage manages to live on so little. He hasn’t eaten enough these past days to keep weight on a gopher. He ought to just break down and
eat some rabbit before the wind blows his scrawny ass away.”
Chance said nothing. He held up a hand, turning it slowly in the dancing firelight. It seemed so unreal, so wrong to be wearing so much of a friend’s blood.
Jhom put his knife down on the stone before the fire. He twisted away and rummaged through his seemingly bottomless trail pack. Then he turned back to Chance bearing a torn piece of blanket and a Baeldonian canteen that held enough water to swim in.
“Hold your hands out,” he said.
Chance obeyed, extending his hands out between his knees.
Jhom doused the cool water on Chance’s hands and forearms and rubbed at the bloody skin. The sensation of the cool water and the warm pressure of Jhom’s efforts to rub the blood away rushed over him like strong wine. It was the first time in days he’d felt any semblance of relaxation.
“You’re exhausted,” Jhom said, “It kills me to see you so worn down. You have to stop despairing so much.”
Chance let his head drift back into the stone again. “I’m fine.”
“Sure, I can see that. You don’t eat, you don’t sleep, you barely drink anything. You’re not a Son of Pentyrfal, you’re a goddamned mortal.”
“Demi-mortal.”
“Don’t play coy with me. You know exactly what I mean.”
“I’m fine.”
Chance sat there with his eyes closed for several peaceful minutes, taking a much needed respite as Jhom worked the obstinate blood from his hands.
“How’d it go with the boy?” Jhom asked as he poured a rinse.
Chance thought about Graen sleeping out on the dirty blankets of the failing porch. The Watchers didn’t sleep under roofs during times of trouble or trauma. Theirs was an odd and little understood religion, rife with taboos and driven by awe and fear of the spirits of the night. They believed dreams were an outlet for minor demons that collect in mortal heads during times of calamity and despair. The demons could only be released during sleep, and slumbering beneath a physical roof foiled that effort. It’d been all Chance could do to convince Friss that the porch, despite the fractured and nearly collapsed eve hanging over it, wasn’t truly indoors.
“You sleeping already?” Jhom pressed.
Chance opened his eyes. “No, just thinking. It went about as well as I expected. Graen’s not well.”
“Well, thank you for sharing the obvious. He’s been spraying blood with every breath. I’m impressed he’s made it this far.”
“I dug out a few bone slivers,” Chance said regretfully, “But the sorry truth is his lung’s gone soft. All I could do was stitch him back up. I wish to hell we had Beam and the Blood Caeyl here. All we can do now is hope for a miracle.”
“Probably best he just dies in his sleep,” Jhom said as he doused Chance’s hands with water a final time.
The words were true, and Chance knew it, but he still felt angry at hearing them delivered by another, even Jhom. It felt like a betrayal whispered in the night.
Jhom took the torn piece of blanket and blotted Chance’s hands dry. As he worked, his eyes slipped over to the empty, crooked door leading out of the dilapidated farmhouse.
“What is it?” Chance asked.
“Friss, I reckon,” Jhom said, passing him a tentative look, “Feeling pained for her. No way she’ll take it well. Hell of a thing, a Watcher killed by a horse fall. After all the battles that man’s survived? Bloody shame on the gods for allowing it.”
“He’s not dead yet, Jhom.”
“He will be. We both know it.”
Chance looked off through the broken-down northern wall of the room. The burden of truth in Jhom’s eyes was too much to bear.
A small light flashed inside the tumbledown barn a hundred yards off, just beyond a wild fencerow that separated it from the overgrown yard. Chance watched the distant torch flicker in and out of focus as it moved behind the barn wall’s missing boards. Mawby and Wenzil were out there tending the horses under what was left of the barn’s roof.
He pulled his newly cleaned hands up into his lap. He twisted sidelong against the hearth so that he more directly faced the night. Most of the house’s north wall was hunkering down in the grass. The silvery moonlight pouring down from the cloudless night only made the old barn beyond it look that much sadder. Rotting fence posts stuck out of the grass at sorry angles like neglected headstones. In the field beyond the barn simmered the surreal ribbon of a creek. Even the craggy trees and scrubby bushes littering the banks of the creek looked frail and despairing.
Out beyond the dying farmstead sprawled miles and miles of nothing. The plains rolled away on moonlit swells like an ocean of grass. It wasn’t so different from the short time he’d spent on the Sea of Hope a lifetime ago. Just like watching the distant shore from the hull of a rollicking ship, looking out over these plains from this dilapidated house left him feeling useless and insignificant. What was the point of resistance? Nothing they did as mortals really mattered. This mortal life was temporary and fleeting. What did it matter who ruled on top of Calevia when the earth itself was all that’d survive in the end? Would Graen’s pointless anguish have any meaning after he was dead? Or after all those who’d shared his life and death were dead as well? Does a memory forgotten have any meaning to the universe?
The dark images found the chinks in his defenses, and one by one shoved their despairing knives into him. He fell forward on his elbows and buried his face into his hands.
“You all right?” Jhom asked.
Chance’s breath was locked somewhere between his stomach and his mouth. His eyes were on fire. He felt like he was falling, like he’d been falling so long that he didn’t even care anymore.
“Chance?”
“I’m fine.”
“Yeah, I can see that. It’s obvious.”
“I’m just tired, Jhom.”
“I want you to sleep tonight. I’ve prepared a tea for you. Wenzil gave it to me. I want you to drink it, and I don’t want to hear any of your bullshit belligerence about it.”
A rush of warm, aromatic steam suddenly filled Chance’s nose and head. He pulled his hands from his face and considered the mug held up before him.
“Take it.”
Jhom’s tone was impossible to refuse, so Chance obliged him without argument or comment. As he drank, the warmth of the spices quickly radiated through his head and chest. He immediately felt lightheaded and just a tad giddy.
“It’ll help you sleep,” Jhom said, gripping Chance’s shoulder, “If there’s any change in the boy, I swear I’ll wake you.”
Chance nodded. He took another sip. Jhom was right. Though he’d felt better after the long sleep imposed by Beam’s caeyl, another day of this soulless reality had already washed the effects to the gutter. Thoughts of Luren and Beam and the despair of the world proved too great an adversary for rest, especially for one whose natural tendency when faced by an open tomb was to run straight into it.
“I made up a bed just there beyond the fire,” Jhom said, “I’ll stand watch over the party tonight. Wen’ll watch over Grae. I’ll keep an eye on the savage.”
“Mawby’s not our enemy, Jhom.”
“Maybe not, but I’m watching him all the same. It’ll be a hell of a lot worse for us if he throws a change of heart and decides to trot his ass back to his Elders.”
Chance took another, deeper drink of the tea. He was surprised at how quickly it was taking him down. Or maybe it was just his own surrender to Jhom’s will and the needs of his flesh. He put the mug down on the hearth and rose to his feet. Jhom grabbed his arm as he wavered.
“I want to move out before dawn,” Chance said, looking up at Jhom. The Baeldon’s face was twisting slightly, his features wavering in and out of focus. Whatever Wenzil had given him was ten times the strength of his own potions.
“We’ll be ready,” Jhom said as he guided him toward the bedding.
“If Grae survives the night,” Chance said, fighting to bite the slur off his words,
“We need to get him to Beam. He’s our only hope for him. If Grae doesn’t survive—”
“We’ll deal with the breach in that dam when it finally gives. He’s not dead until he’s dead.”
Chance laughed. The effort threw his balance off, though Jhom held him steady. “That’s not what you prophesied a few minutes ago,” he said, looking up at the three Baeldons looking back at him.
“Well, I reckon it’s a few minutes later,” the three Jhoms replied, “A few minutes can impart an hour of wisdom on a man.”
With his friend’s help, Chance crawled down to his bedding. Jhom had created a mat of grass and leaves beneath his blankets, though he had no memory of seeing him do it. Then, as he settled down into the soft mattress, the truth of it rushed over him: Jhom and Wenzil had conspired to this moment.
“You’re a good friend,” he said to Jhom, as he plummeted toward the dark ethers of sleep.
At least, he hoped he said it.
∞
Mawby stood in the musty darkness of the dying barn, dutifully brushing Jhom’s horse with two old brushes he’d found in the stall. There was only one stall still habitable beneath the remains of the sinking roof, and he’d taken the liberty to grant Farnot the honor. The mare had returned to them in short order after they’d awakened from the Parhronii’s caeyl curse exactly as Jhom had predicted she would, whereas the other animals had cost them hours of searching. Farnot surely deserved the small comfort of sleeping inside tonight.
Brushing the horse probably wasn’t doing all that much for the animal’s coat, but the act of doing it made him feel better. The taer-cael of the giant horse’s steady heartbeat thundered in a powerful two beat rhythm that he felt clear through to his bones. It felt as soothing and regenerative as any meditative trance he could ever have summoned, and it was a hell of a lot less work.
Mawby worked the brushes, one in each hand, in time to the horse’s heart song, focusing on each stroke and taking refuge deep in that cadenced motion. He needed this. He needed a diversion, some small pardon from the terrors that’d plagued him so ruthlessly these past days.
