The knife was thrown true, and it sunk
halfway into the left side of the soldier’s chest. Surprise and
blood bloomed in equal amounts on the soldiers face and chest as
his legs lost strength and his knees hit the ground.
There had been four in that row, the leftmost
was now down, and Dan'r ran for the soldier on the right. The
soldier swung his sword backhand, but Dan'r moved in close, blocked
the soldiers swing with his arm, and drove the dagger through the
soldier's armpit. He took the sword from the soldier's limp hand
and spun, planting it deep in the next soldier's stomach, and let
go.
He pulled the dagger from the first soldiers'
chest as both fell to the ground and jumped at the third, his knees
hitting the soldier's chest as he drove the dagger at an angle down
into the soldiers’ neck.
As the soldier's lungs started to fill with
blood, and the red liquid frothed at his lips, Dan'r's momentum
from the jump carried them both to the ground, Dan'r's hands
already back inside his cloak.
The four soldiers left were hesitant now,
scared. Two of them held their swords in both hands, and the swords
were visibly shaking, while the beat-red Sergeant had turned white.
Admittedly, they had just seen five of their friends killed in
seconds, and in spectacular fashion. Dan'r smiled, and tried to
hide his panting as he fought for breath.
'What...what do you want?' the Sergeant
finally managed to croak out, stumbling over even those few,
simple, words.
Dan'r turned his head to the left, looked at
the sergeant, and smiled as viciously as he could.
'Run,' was all he said.
The three soldiers stared at Dan'r, then
glanced at their Sergeant, then at each other, then dropped their
swords and ran. The Sergeant followed right behind.
***
As soon as the soldiers were out of sight,
Dan’r slouched, shambled a few feet away from the bodies, and
collapsed, face up, breathing deeply.
‘That…was not…easy.’ He said, mostly to
himself, as he rolled over onto his front, pushed himself up till
he was standing, and slowly limped his way over to Gel, who was
still swaying.
‘Hey, hey, kid, you’re okay kid,’ he said,
kneeling down, patting the boy’s shoulder, and trying to sound
comforting. His exhaustion didn’t make him any more convincing, but
he doubted Gel would notice.
‘What…what happened?’ the boy asked as he
slowly started to blink and shake the dizziness away.
‘Don’t worry kid, just…just sit here, catch
your breath.’
‘The bearded man...where…where is he?’ Gel
stuttered, trying to stand.
‘I’ll go look for him,’ Dan’r said as he
stood again, looked over the wagon towards where he’d thrown the
Legnar earlier.
He saw him, lying against the brick wall of a
home, one of his legs bent forwards at the knee.
‘Don’t worry Gel, he won’t be going anywhere
for a while.’ Dan’r said. And then he noticed the girl.
He had seen what happened to the girl
earlier, but had forgotten about her in the melee that followed.
She’d just been so quiet, so unnoticeable in the chaos and
violence.
Even now, she just stood there in her shift,
eyes wide, making not a sound at all.
‘Don’t worry, girl,’ he said as calmly as he
could, his hands open before him in what he hoped was a soothing
gesture, ‘just sit down, everything will be alright. We won’t hurt
you.’
What surprised him most was that she did just
that; she sat, without a word.
‘Well...that was easier than I expected.’ He
thought to himself as he turned back to Gel.
***
Dan’r was back at his shoulder again, and the
world was slowly stopping its virulent turning and swaying, when
Gel looked up.
The old man’s lined face and close-cropped
beard startled Gel as they moved into view.
‘How many fingers?’ Dan’r asked, holding up
two.
It was two, Gel was sure. He wasn’t seeing
double anymore. That had to be good news.
‘Two many,’ he said, smiling wryly. Even
through the joke, he hurt, and he groaned as he hauled himself
slowly up from his slumped seat on the ground, using the wagon
wheel at his back as leverage.
‘Good enough. Talk to the girl, Gel. I’ll go
check on the Legnar.’ Dan’r said as he turned away.
‘He took my fingers from me; took my family
from me.’
Dan’r stopped for a second, looked back at
Gel, ‘I’ll find out what he knows, Gel. Then…then we’ll see.’
Gel nodded, took a step away from the wagon
as Dan’r walked off.
He was still thinking slowly, he knew. He
should be angry still, should go after the bearded man, but…Dan’r
had said something about a girl.
He shook his head again as he looked up, and
saw her sitting on the wagon bench.
She was…
She was nothing like any of the girls he’d
seen before. She was…she was thin, tiny even, and tanned, She
looked tall, and her arms had muscles, and…and freckles! And she
was dirty. Images of Sheane and Mae darted into his head, prim;
proper, plump…clean. Compared to them she was; well, she wasn’t
pretty.
But then, she was still a girl, and she was
in her shift…
It took Gel a minute of staring at her before
he even realized he was. There was just something about her blue
eyes, all wide, and looking down at him, and the messy curled red
hair, and how it framed her oval face, and her shift, and how it
fell loosely over…
Gel coughed.
‘uh…umm…Hi’ he started, taking a step forward
and holding out a hand.
She just stared at him, silent,
unblinking.
‘ahh…my…my name’s Gel,’ he tried again,
pulling his hand back slowly.
‘Would…would you like my jacket?’ he asked,
motioning to pull off his overcoat.
He breathed a sigh of relief when she nodded,
and took a step back as she stood. Her shift only came up to her
mid-thigh, and his breath caught as it fluttered higher as she
jumped down from the wagon bench, her knees bending slightly as her
bare feet hid the cobblestone.
She wasn’t pretty like Sheane or Mae was, but
she was…she was so much more…
Gel felt his face heating up, colouring, and
he turned away from her; held his jacket out behind him.
He could have sworn he felt sparks, or
something, fly when her fingers brushed his as she grabbed the
jacket.
***
Erris took the jacket from the boy. She
supposed it was a nice gesture, for all that it did no good. She
watched him as she slipped the jacket over her shoulders, her hands
hidden inside, holding it closed at the front.
He was…young. Young to be scarred like that,
a jagged, still red gash all across the right side of his face.
Young, yes, but still lucky to be alive; lucky to have his eye. She
was also taller than him, and found herself looking down at his
curly hair.
***
Erris gave a start and coughed awkwardly;
he’d turned back around, and she’d been staring at him. His cheeks
were reddening slowly, but she didn’t bother to stop. Instead, she
simply furrowed her brow, and stared further.
‘Ahh…you could say thanks or, you know,
something,’ the boy said, keeping his eyes averted.
‘Do you have any food?’ Erris asked, still
staring intently.
‘I, ahh…no, I don’t have any, I…Dan’r might
have some’ he said, turning away and moving quickly in the
direction the old man had gone.
Erris followed him, bare feet silent on the
cool cobblestone.
***
Dan’r knuckled the small of his back as he
walked away from Gel, towards the bearded man he had sent flying.
He was certainly feeling better since the night with the rain,
since he had stopped drinking, but he was also too old to be moving
that much, and that fast; to be throwing around that much power
with his Art, that quickly.
‘No choice,’ he said to himself, rolling a
shoulder, wincing as it popped and groaned back at him. As much as
they hurt now, it would likely be all he could do to move when
morning came.
He knelt as he reached the Legnar. The
bearded man was breathing haggardly and lying in a slump on his
left side, his back to the wall he had hit, his right leg bent
forward at the knee. A slow trickle of blood slid down from his
nose, only to get lost in the big, bushy beard he sported, and
there were various other minor cuts and abrasions marking the man’s
face and hands. Dan’r grabbed the man’s jacket, hauled him to a
sitting position.
‘Right, you awake?’ he asked, exhaustion
evident on his voice.
The bearded man didn’t respond.
‘Oy, wake up,’ he said, slapping the man
once, twice, across the face.
On the third slap, the man groaned, his eyes
fluttering open.
‘Right. Here’s the deal. I’m going to ask you
some questions, and you’re going to answer me,’ Dan’r said, leaning
forward, locking eyes with the bearded man. He saw hatred and pain
in them, and what he thought might be madness.
‘And if I don’t?’
‘You’ve got one broken leg already. If you
don’t cooperate, I’ll break the other. Then I’ll break your left
arm, then your right. And then I’ll leave you here. Maybe you’ll
die of thirst before the wolves show up, but I doubt it.’ Dan’r
said, keeping his voice cool.
‘You’ll freeze for this. Ragn will take away
his warmth, his protection, and you will freeze for all eternity,
conscious, frozen, unmoving…’ specks of blood-flecked spit started
to fly as the man started to rage, his voice quickly rising till
Dan’r cut him off with another backhand across the jaw.
‘Yeah, I get it. I’ll be cold. Now where’re
the boy’s parents?’ Dan’r asked; the bearded man glared up at
Dan’r, grinning.
‘That looks like it must be painful,’ Dan’r
said, looking at the man’s right knee, jutting out at an impossible
angle, ‘I wonder what it feels like if I move it around’ he
wondered aloud calmly as he grabbed the man’s ankle and bent the
knee back and forth.
The man grunted and ground his teeth; it must
have hurt, but he stayed silent. Dan’r shrugged, bent the knee back
towards its normal position, then back the other direction
again.
The man yelled in pain, ‘Gone! They’re gone.’
He growled, his fists clenching in pain as Dan’r nodded and let go
of his leg.
‘Gone where?’
‘The village was sent to the Camp,’ the
Legnar gasped, breathing heavily. ‘They’ll be used to, to try to
find a way to stop the Fog.’ His breathing was
laboured
.
‘Where’s this camp?’
‘I don’t know. They were sent to Wraegn for
processing. It won’t matter anyway. They’ll be thrown in long
before you could ever reach them.’ He added as Dan’r reached slowly
for his leg again.
‘And the Fog. What does it do; where does it
come from?’
‘I don’t know. It came from the sea, swept
down through Rege. It just grabs people, and they disappear, and
nothing we’ve done has stopped it yet. It’s Ragn, it must be,
sending punishment against us, against the unbelievers to the
North. He’s angry we haven’t eradicated them yet, we must…’
The bearded man rambled, his eyes glazing
over slowly as he slid to the side down the wall, the pain
overwhelming him again, throwing him back into unconsciousness.
Dan’r stood slowly, staring at nothing ahead
of him as he thought madly, trying to remember small bits of
ignored lessons he had been given years earlier at the Academy. It
was like trying to herd a kaleidoscope of butterflies; virtually
impossible, and almost completely useless. But there was something
there, something that seemed to click.
‘Is he dead?’ Dan’r’s reverie was interrupted
by Gel, standing several feet from the collapsed form lying
prostrate against the wall.
‘Not yet, Gel,’ Dan’r said, turning to the
boy, seeing the anger evident on his face.
‘Good,’ Gel replied, staring at the man a
moment before turning on one heel and stalking angrily toward where
his bow had been thrown, mere minutes ago.
The redheaded girl had been standing behind
Gel, his jacket wrapped tightly around her shoulders. She stood
staring at the man on the ground as Gel walked past her.
‘Are you alright?’ Dan’r asked as he stepped
closer to the girl.
‘That’s my brother,’ she replied without
looking, nodding her head towards the unconscious man.
‘What…what happened to you?’ Dan’r asked,
glancing at Gel, who was picking his bow off the cobblestone
street.
‘They’re gone,’ she replied, looking up at
him, ‘my parents, my sisters…they’re all gone now,’ she looked back
down at her brother, ‘he’s all I have left,’ she said with a short,
wry laugh. She looked almost haunting, standing there in her shift
and Gel’s coat, one dirty hand reaching out of the coat to wipe
away at the grime and tears on her cheek.
Dan’r was shocked as he knelt; put a hand to
her shoulder. ‘It’ll be alright,’ he said, ‘come with us, and it’ll
be alright.’
***
Erris wanted to laugh in the old man’s face,
as he told her it’d be alright. It was a platitude, she knew, but
it was just so…so wrong. Of course it wouldn’t be alright.
‘Then again,’ she thought to herself as she
nodded, ‘he probably knows that too.’
With that nod, the old man was up and moving
towards the wagon. ‘There’s no time for that, Gel, get in the
wagon,’ he said as he put one hand on the wagon seat and looked at
the boy, already on his way back towards her brother, ‘we’re
leaving.’
Erris walked away from her brother. She
couldn’t stand to look at him. He was all she had left in the
world, and he’d hit her, thrown the loss of their family in her
face like it was a joke; like it was justified. She found herself
wondering why all this was happening, what she could have possibly
done to make Ragn so angry at her. As she picked up the books lying
on the ground, she could hear the old man and the boy arguing about
something in the background. But her mind was elsewhere as she
reached for the book of essays she had been reading on the road
earlier.