The Fire and the Fog (21 page)

Dan’r started to walk towards the sound. Then
to jog. Awkwardly at first, each footfall sending a jarring pain
piercing up through his head. By the time he reached the edge of
the town, he was running at a full sprint, ignoring the stabbing
pains in his head. He couldn’t believe it. No-one in this
gods-forsaken land could write or play something so beautiful.

He slowed as he saw the large tree looming
over the hill, slowed as the song got louder and louder. As he
walked closer and started up the hill he could see a child sitting
against the tree, swaying as he played, his head down, his eyes
either fixed on his instrument, or closed.

The child looked up as Dan’r started to climb
the tree, looked up and looked straight at Dan’r. The child was
young, his hair light blonde. His left eye was a startling blue,
light and clear as the sky on a perfect day, but his right was
closed tight, scabbed over under a long red cut that ran from the
boy’s forehead to the middle of his cheek. The boy cocked his head
to the side, as if confused, but his left eye betrayed no
confusion, no emotion. It looked as dead as Dan’r felt every
morning.

The boy stared at Dan’r, never slowing or
stopping his song as his fingers played expertly across the lute in
his arms. Dan’r looked the boy’s right hand, bloody, and with
pieces of fingers missing, when his chest clenched. Then it
tightened. Then Dan’r fell.

It was happening again. Another fit. As
Dan’r’s body flailed wildly on the ground, he wondered if he would
make it out of this one alive, wondered if he would be able to help
the boy. As his vision faded to black, the boy’s song carried
on

I

Dan’r woke slowly. Very slowly. He woke from
a sleep that had held no dreams. Even before waking, in the dark
semi-haze just before consciousness, he knew that he hadn’t dreamt
of his wife, of the ship and the storm. The sleep had been deep,
cleansing. Painless and pure. Almost. As slowly as he woke, he was
slower realizing he was awake.

He knew he had not dreamt while asleep. The
feeling, the wonder of a dreamless sleep faded as the awareness of
wakefulness gained ground. By the time Dan’r knew he was awake, all
thoughts of dreams were long gone.

The first thing his conscious mind chose to
notice was that his back was warm. Warm and dry. Very warm in fact.
The warmth presented large contrast to his front, which was
wet.

The warmth was not bad. Not too hot, like the
embers of a fire, or weak, like trying to get warmth from a candle
in the middle of winter. It was the kind of warmth that made one
want to lie down somewhere in the middle of an afternoon, and
sleep; the kind of warmth that washed away all aches and pains and
cares in the world, and just felt right.

And then Dan’r sneezed, and noticed the wet
grass in his nostrils, tickling him. Annoying. There was grass all
around him. He clenched his eyes together as he came fully awake,
and memory flooded his head. He had been sick, shaking, maybe
dying. And there had been a storm, and music, and a boy.

His eyes bolted open as he remembered the
boy, but all he saw from where he lay was the grass, emerald waves
of grass stretching out over low, rolling hills.

Dan’r groaned as he lifted his front slowly
off the wet grass, lifted his weight up onto his elbows, his head
hanging down between his arms as he breathed heavily. He remembered
a time when waking didn’t take nearly so much effort, but he was
young and healthy then. Now he was old and slow, and there was no
haze of alcohol to mask and dull his pains.

He grunted as he pushed with one arm, rolling
himself slowly onto his back, the sun warming his chest almost
instantly. His eyes closed quickly, reflexively against the day
star’s bright flames, and then blinked slowly open, squinting
through the sunlight. That moment was perfect. The feeling of
warmth ran through him. The sun had warmed his back, soothed his
muscles. He didn’t hurt. He couldn’t remember the last time his
back hadn’t hurt.

The sky above the grassy knoll was blue and
beautiful. The sun, the blue expanse, the few pure white wisps
trailing lazily through the stratosphere, they made his hand itch.
His hand twitched slightly, grabbing at nothing, and for the first
time in years, it was not reaching for the nearest bottle. He was
reaching for paints and brushes he was not sure he still had, for
parchment he now knew he needed

‘They’ll have to wait’, he mumbled to
himself, low, under his breath, breathing deeply. So low even his
own ears were unsure if he had spoken at all.

His head didn’t hurt; his arms didn’t so much
as shake as he pushed himself slowly off the ground to stand. His
chest wasn’t so tight either. Whatever had been plaguing him, rest
had done him some good. Dan’r muttered something about sleep curing
all ills as he stood.

The tree from earlier was not far away. The
great oak stood thirty feet off or so, far enough that Dan’r had
not been sheltered from the rain under its awning branches, or from
the sun. But it was close enough that now, in the light, he could
clearly see the boy lying slumped over in the grass, his body
fallen at an awkward angle.

In several quick strides, Dan’r was at the
boys side, kneeling. He was shocked when he touched the boy’s neck
to check; the boy was unconscious, but still breathing.

The boys light blonde hair was spattered with
drops of blood at the front, and was cut short enough all around
that Dan’r could clearly see the red, bloody gash across the right
side of the boys face. With the dried blood covering most of the
boys face, Dan’r could hardly tell what the damage was, or what had
caused it, though the cut looked straight at least.

The eye was certainly bad, Dan’r thought as
he pulled the boy off of his side, and lay him out on his back
beside the tree. Under the boy lay a lute, its neck broken,
probably from when the boy fell over. As beautiful an instrument as
it might have been, it would make no more music.

The boy’s face looked bad, and if it were any
indication, his hand would be bad as well. Dan’r left it, bound
tightly in blood-stained cloth, two bloody fingers and a thumb
sticking free of the wrappings.

And the boy was young. Dan’r was old,
certainly, and had little to no experience with youth, but the boy
looked to be no more than fourteen. Young, to have been so badly
hurt.

Young, to play such beautiful music.

Still, Dan’r could do nothing for him here,
under a tree in a large field. He would have to move. The boy’s
life was in danger, and for the first time in what seemed like
forever, Dan’r had some purpose other than alcohol. He would save
the boy. Somehow.

***

An hour or so later, the high noon sun found
Dan’r grunting and sweating as he pulled a wooden cart back towards
the village, with the boy in the back. He had found the cart easily
enough, it was under a pile of crates blocking the entrance to the
town, but it took longer to find a building standing in good enough
condition to act as shelter.

The cart bounced heavily along the
cobblestone streets, and a light pall of smoke and death still hung
on the air. The boy had been limp and mumbling when Dan’r lifted
him to the back of the wagon. Exhausted, fevered, the boy was sick.
He had to be taken care of, but here was no-one around to do it;
no-one but Dan’r.

So he trudged on, the cart behind him
trundled, shifting from side to side as the wheels rose and fell
unevenly over the city’s old cobblestone streets, till he stopped
in front of the building he had chosen for shelter.

The church was large, solid. Its heavy wooden
door and thick stone walls were mostly intact and, while the
insides had been ransacked, they were in much better shape than the
rest of the village. The only other suitable house was the large
stone manse at the top of the hill, and Dan’r hadn’t wanted to
climb that alone, much less pulling the wounded boy behind him.

So the cart rolled to a stop in front of the
church, and Dan’r put his hands to his knees to breathe. His head
was clear for the moment, his hands recovered from their shaking,
but his lungs were still old, tired, and out of practice. He sucked
in air rapidly, wanting to lie down on the road and rest. He
couldn’t allow himself the luxury though. If he did, who knew when
he’d persuade himself to rise again.

***

Dan’r left to look more thoroughly through
the streets and houses of the little town. He searched for useful
things left behind, things left unbroken; things left un-charred by
the fires. There were surprisingly few. He had covered the boy,
left him in the dark while he went out to search. There had been
nothing he could do for the boy without supplies, and now he had a
nearly full sack on his shoulders. Candles, a water-skin filled
from a clean trough, some bread and cheese found in a pantry, a
miraculously unbroken bottle of spirits from what must have been
the village inn.

More than supplies though, Dan’r made his way
back to the church with thoughts. Something was wrong here. There
were too few dead in the village for the attack to have been by
raiders, or slavers. Very few old or infirm were among the dead,
and raiders generally left them behind. The attack had been
organized; had started from inside the village. A vague trickle of
hazy memory from his walk through the village in the rain told him
he had noticed this before. But now, out of the rain, in the
light…it was easier to see. Easier to know that there was something
else going on.

‘Whatever it is, I’ll deal with it later’ he
thought to himself darkly as he pushed through the wooden church
doors.

***

It took him much less time to go through his
supplies than it had taken to find them. He lit the candles, spread
them out throughout the church for light, and comfort. He managed
to trickle some water down the boys throat, used the rest to wash
the scabbed blood away from the boy’s eye and hand, then he daubed
the spirits over the sharp cuts, to stave off infection.

The boy had yelled when he poured on the
spirits, and struggled, but he was weak. Weaker than Dan’r. Now he
lay on a cot Dan’r had moved to one side of the church, piled under
blankets.

The boy was lucky. The gash along his eye was
straight, shallow, and leapt from his forehead to his cheek. The
eye had been untouched. His hand though…he would still be able to
use what was left of his fingers, but…well…nothing else could be
done. Maybe if they had been in Alta, and the boy had been found
earlier…but no.

Still, he would live. He would sleep, deeply,
until his fever broke. But he would live, he would recover.

And until he did, Dan’r would stay with
him.

***

The first day, Dan’r mostly slept. While
awake, he prowled through the village hunting for more supplies,
found more food, some bandages, some pots and pans he could cook
with. He managed to get food into the boy, cleaned and bandaged the
boys hand and eye as best he could, then he cleaned himself. A
knife and a piece of shattered mirror helped tame his beard, and
his hair, both of which he had neglected for entirely too long.

The second day though, Dan’r walked into what
looked like every other house on the street, tall, clean, proper,
only slightly burned by fire. He had long since stopped looking at
the bodies still piled in the streets. Its windows were even all
intact. This house was different though. Dan’r had no idea who
might have lived there before, but whoever was had painted.

None of the work was particularly good. It
adorned the walls and filled a large room in the back of the house.
Gaudy portraits, the colours muddy and poorly mixed, the
backgrounds uniform, empty. The people themselves were flat; no
detail or expression to them. They felt fake, without essence or
ardor. But they were painted.

And that room at the back…filled with
painting supplies; oils, pigments, brushes, canvas. More supplies
than Dan’r could remember having in years.

So he took them.

The rest of the second day, and the third
day, found Dan’r painting. He ate some of the scavenged supplies
himself, managed to get water and some bread into the boy, but the
rest of the time, he painted. Nothing useful, nothing spectacular,
he just wanted to paint.

Time passed. Dan’r spent the days without
speaking; there was no need to. But the small, burnt-out village
was far from quiet. The quiet scratches of charcoal on parchment
and the rustling and light moans of the hurt boy somehow seemed to
fill the inside of the stone church, seemed to mix with the sounds
of the world outside. The high pitched chirps and trills of small
birds, the rustling of debris tossed about in light winds, even
once the crash of a burned-out house collapsing, its charcoaled
timbers unable to support itself; the sounds from the outside tried
to invade Dan’r’s mind, tried to distract him.