The Fire and the Fog (11 page)

Time inched slowly as he stepped into view,
as if her thoughts had summoned him. He carried one of the taverns
heavy wooden chairs in both hands, and he swung hard as he
blindsided the soldier threatening Jayke.

The chair cracked, splintered and broke as it
hit the soldier, sending small chunks of wood flying with the
soldier, his sword spinning dangerously through the air, as he
landed in a crumpled heap ten feet from where he had stood.

There was another stunned, all encompassing
silence for a moment, then the metallic clang of the soldiers lost
sword hitting the ground was accompanied by the leather rasp of
sword on sheathe as the remaining soldiers drew in unison.

Time still inched, it inched and it crept, it
stalled and it dragged, it did anything but move as it should as
her father stood, the back of the shattered chair still held tight
in his hands. He stood in the middle of the tavern floor, his face
red, his arms bulging, his jaw clenched in fury, and he looked the
strongest man in the world as stared down the nine angry, armed
soldiers.

Erris had no idea how much time passed as
everyone in the room stood, silent, staring at each other. She
wondered if time was passing, or if it had stopped, and she would
stand forever in that horrible moment.

When time did finally start again, it wasn’t
with the violent, bloody outburst that she had expected.

‘Drop your swords!’ a gruff voice yelled from
the bar, and every head in the tavern swiveled in its
direction.

There, on the near side of the bar, one
raised foot planted on the seat of a chair, stood the tavern’s
owner. His large, vest-covered belly and thinning grey hair hardly
let him cut an imposing figure, but the large metal blunderbuss in
his hands, pointing at the soldiers certainly did.

The gun didn’t shine or glitter; its metal
was dull, and its wooden stock well-worn. But its large, fluted
barrel certainly gave the soldiers more pause than Johan and his
broken chair.

‘Get out of here you lot’, the tavern keep
said, motioning the soldiers towards the door with the barrel of
his gun. His voice brokered no debate, no argument, and the gun in
his hands brokered even less.

‘Right,’ said one of the less drunk soldiers
as he sheathed his sword, ‘We were just leavin’ anyhow.’ He spat at
Johan’s feet as he turned, but he still left the tavern, followed
shortly by the rest of the soldiers. Two of the soldiers grabbed
the hurt one from off the floor, hauling him to the door by his
shoulders. He seemed to be trying to stand, but he was clearly
still too shaken up to do so, and it was only the arms of his two
allies that kept him on his feet.

As the last soldier left, the innkeeper
lowered his gun, and wiped the pooling sweat off his brow with the
back of one shaking hand.

‘You had all best get out of here too,’ he
said, laying the blunderbuss on the bar’s countertop, ‘‘fore they
come back.’

Johan was already motioning to his family;
getting the children carried, the upturned chairs put right,
getting them and all their parcels piled quickly at the door.

He stopped in front of the shorter, older
tavern keep before they left, laying a hand on the other man’s
shoulder.

‘Thanks’ he said, offering a small pouch of
coins with his free hand,

‘Don’t mention it’ the portly man replied,
but he took the pouch anyways.

Then the family was out the door, hitching
Marmot to the wagon quickly, and the next thing Erris knew, they
were bouncing away over the cobblestone roads of the village,
leaving at a much swifter pace than they had come. It was a flurry
of activity as they left the tavern, and Erris could barely keep up
with it. She was sure she was missing something too. The soldiers
were nowhere to be seen when they left the tavern, and her brothers
and father kept glancing worriedly at each other. Erris didn’t even
remember to ask what they had been discussing in the tavern; any
thought of the family’s hushed conversation had vanished the moment
the soldiers’ harassment had started.

Erris lay down in the now empty back of the
wagon, Joahn and Boll beside her, and lay staring at the night sky,
her mind racing as the wagon trundled over the worn cobblestones on
its way out of the village.

I

Considering all that had happened that day,
it was no wonder that Gel slept poorly. No sooner had he flopped
onto his bed and closed his eyes then he saw Sheane’s face, covered
in tears, running away from him. He tried to catch her, but the
grass was long, and it caught at his pants as he ran, tripping and
slowing him. It felt like the ground was grabbing him and pulling
him down, trying to swallow him. But Sheane in her flowing dress
kept getting further away, her face buried in her hands, her sobs
slowly getting more and more faint until they disappeared
completely. He could still see her though, her hair flowing in the
wind as she ran from him. The grass didn’t touch her at all, even
as it rose around his legs and twined around his hands. He tried to
hack at it with his sword, but it was really a lute, and it
wouldn’t cut.

Gel didn’t understand how she was still
running. The grass was low around her feet, but it was almost up to
his neck now, and he couldn’t break free. He could see every step
she made, every step further from him, but he couldn’t reach her,
he couldn’t even reach out to her anymore.

He knew it was because he had kissed Mae.
Sheane was sad and angry, because Mae had told her, and now she was
running away from him and he would never get to see her again. And
then he saw Mae.

There was no sun in the sky, just Mae. There
she stood above him, at once giant and tiny, and perfect. She was
smiling down at him, the light of her light blue eyes lighting his
world in place of the sun, and she smiled as she turned and started
to unbutton her dress.

He started awake for the first time,
sweating. He was hot and clammy, and couldn’t stop thinking of
Sheane and Mae. He stripped to his undergarments and lay, eyes
closed, on his bed. He tried counting sheep, he tried performing
one of Don Vole’s more boring compositions in his head, but no
matter what he tried, it seemed like he sweated and tossed and
turned for hours before he finally fell back asleep, not even
noticing when he did so.

This time he stood alone in a deserted city,
its houses crumbling and abandoned. He did not know the city, but
the cobwebs hanging in the doors of the buildings, just in front of
the complete blackness that waited inside each house frightened
him. Walking down a suddenly familiar street, he came to a fork in
the road, and at its center stood Sheane and Mae. He raised a hand
towards them, and they both turned on a dime and walked away from
him, each taking separate paths. Neither so much as glanced at him,
or each other, as they turned, they just walked away, leaving him
standing, arm outstretched.

‘It’s only a dream’ he thought as he turned
to sit in the middle of the fork; he would not chase either one, or
he would lose them both. He couldn’t lose them, he loved them. If
he lost them, he’d never see them again.

As he sat, he fell. The city was gone, and he
was falling, fast as the wind. To either side of him as he fell
flashed visions of his two friends, but he could reach out to
neither. He watched as they grew old, married, had children, and
died, all without him. Why had they left him?

Or had he left them?

He didn’t know who they had married, or what
their children looked like, but as he looked at them falling beside
him, they looked the same. He knew they were getting older; knew
their lives were passing by without him. But it was the dream, he
knew, and he hated it.

As he woke for the second time, he knew that
he had chosen neither girl, and that they had both moved on without
him. He felt lost, and alone, and hot again. Gel stood and moved to
the window by his bed, but by the time he had thrown open the
shutters, the dream had already passed from his mind.

As he lay back down in bed and fell once more
into a fitful sleep, he forgot he even had a dream, but the
feelings of sadness and loneliness stayed with him.

This time, Gel slept a while before he
started to dream again, though the dream was worse than any
before.

His third dream that night was fire. Fire and
pain and death. In this dream, he stood over the town, watching as
his parents died and his friends were slaughtered, and the town
caught fire and burned to ashes around him. He listened to the
screams of the women and children as they died, their pain and
terror and agony twisting in his heart like a red-hot knife.

Other things were happening, red men moved
through the streets with flashing swords, and people screamed, and
gunfire sounded, exploding through the quiet. But it was the fire
he heard the most. He heard it, almost felt it as it cracked and
burned, as it twisted and reached and devoured. It was frightening
and beautiful, its colours reaching up into the sky; blues and reds
and greens. The fire wove the most complex song he had ever heard
as it burned, one that he could barely begin to understand.

When he woke finally, tears streaming down
his face, he thought that no other nightmare could ever be so
frightening. If he grew old and died without ever dreaming its like
again, he would die happy.

And then he heard them; the screams floating
in through his bedroom window, the cries of pain and suffering from
his dream. He heard the crack of fire, the pop of wood boiling and
splitting in the heat. He thought for an instant, prayed for a
second, that he was still dreaming. But he realized that the
flickering red light blanketing his wall was not that of a pale
moon on a cloudless night, but the light of his village, his home,
his life, burning. And he was afraid.

He heard heavy footsteps climbing the stairs,
and he heard his mother crying out his fathers name in pain,
sobbing loudly as she did so.

‘Mother!’ he cried, and the door to his room
exploded inwards, splinters of wood from where a heavy boot had
kicked it in peppering the room. The door fell to the floor with a
crash, and small shards of wood peppered at Gel’s face, but his
eyes were fixed.

In through the doorway stepped a large,
bearded man, who laughed as the fire from outside glittered madly
off his eyes. He was wearing a large, gold buttoned red coat, and
his large red beard seemed as wild and uncontrollable as the fire
from Gel’s dreams. He grinned as he saw Gel abed and walked towards
him, sword arm rising as he came. Each step he took, each time his
thick boots hit the wooden floor of Gel’s room, sounded like the
peal of a large clock, ringing out the seconds to Gel’s doom. The
man’s footsteps were the sound of death approaching; the grinning
man, with his fiery red beard, death himself.

Still half lying under covers, Gel could only
get his right arm free as the man his bed and swung his sword. Gel
tried to protect himself, tried to deflect the sword, to do
anything, but there was nothing Gel could do as the man’s sword
swung down towards his head.

The last thing Gel saw through his splayed
fingers was firelight glinting off the shining blade as it angled
towards his face. Then pain exploded his world, and darkness
followed it.

***

Somehow, Gel woke again. He knew he was
awake, and not dead, because of the pain. In death, Ragn was
supposed to take you into his arms, and wash away all your sin,
your pain, and your fear. When you died, Ragn would take you in,
and take away all your pain, and leave you with nothing but
contentment and love.

Gel felt nothing but pain and fear though, so
he knew he must still be alive.

As he tried to open his eyes, Gel found his
right eye was stuck shut. His left eye opened, and surveyed his
room, which looked too normal; only the shattered remnants of the
door, lying half off its hinges, and his blood soaked bed sheets
gave away that the nightmare from earlier had been no nightmare at
all.

His left hand, reaching up to find what was
wrong with his stuck eye, met only a mass of congealed blood, and
spread pain like wildfire across his face as he probed the
half-scabbed gouge. His fingers stuck slightly in the tacky,
molasses-like blood, and they came away red and wet.

The slow realization of why his entire face
hurt barely registered as he moved to find out what was wrong with
his right hand. He absently wondered if his eye was still there
under the blood, if he’d ever be able to open it and see again. If
he’d ever really want to.

At first he thought his right hand was gone;
he couldn’t move it all. But as he looked, he realized it had
somehow become wrapped tightly in his bright red sheets.