Authors: Antoine Rouaud
After the summer came autumn and another winter. During all this time, Meurnau rallied many villages to his cause and, little by little, the resistance organised itself. Ordinary peasants agreed to take up arms, driven by an anger that had been pent up for far too long. The death of their count had still not been accepted and the very idea that his son Laerte could be leading the rebellion at the captain’s side emboldened them. And then there were the terrible rumours concerning the deaths of Laerte’s mother and sister, and the torture inflicted upon these two innocent victims; barbaric crimes perpetrated for no reason but bestial cruelty . . . The Empire no longer had any justification for its existence when those who served it succumbed to their basest instincts. The captain envisaged retaking Aëd’s Watch shortly. He had his army now.
One evening, in the biggest of the houses at Braquenne, heated by a wide, austere fireplace, Laerte observed his second meeting between Meurnau and his men. Not that he had been invited to it. He was nothing more than a symbol for the rest of the Saltmarsh. His own identity had been blurred into an altogether larger, handsomer and older figure. But at this moment, he hadn’t yet realised he had vanished in favour of a ghost. There he was, enjoying some hot soup while Esyld darned his jacket by the hearth.
‘The attack will take place in the spring,’ explained Meurnau standing behind a table, his hands resting upon a map of the Saltmarsh.
His lieutenants, including Madog, gathered around him and listened attentively. Some had come especially from the neighbouring villages where they were training the inhabitants to fight. The number of skirmishes had multiplied for several months now, and it was murmured that Azdeki was beginning to doubt that the region could be pacified.
‘We will surround Aëd’s Watch without alerting them to the fact, approaching here . . . and here.’
He pointed at two places on the map.
‘They don’t imagine for a single instant that the entire population will take up arms,’ he assured them with a satisfied air. ‘But already, in the neighbouring counties, some are calling the validity
of the Emperor’s actions into question. And once the people start to doubt . . .’
‘Here you go, proud little man, this will keep you warm.’
‘Thank you,’ he answered shyly.
The flames crackled, devouring the log with passion; their light shone in her eyes. He could not tear his own eyes away, hoping to read something more than mere . . . affection there. Perhaps he should confess what he truly felt, or simply kiss her. Yes, he should ask her to accompany him to the house next door where he slept and there, on the porch, he should place a kiss upon her sweet lips. She would not push him away. She had taken care of him, out of more than compassion. She loved him. It could only be that. He would ask her. He had to.
He was going to do it.
‘Esyld . . .’ he murmured.
‘Esyld, go fetch some wood,’ ordered a voice behind him.
And Master Orbey’s firm hand fell upon the boy’s shoulder at the very moment when he was preparing to get up. Because Esyld had nodded to him before leaving her wooden stool. She moved towards the front door while her father took her place with an embarrassed air. She disappeared into the cold night and the door slammed behind her.
‘Sir,’ said Master Orbey, rubbing his hands near the fire, ‘I saw you the other day, training with Madog.’
He brushed his beard with the back of his hand, looking thoughtful before taking the plunge:
‘You aren’t very attentive, sir. I’m worried.’
Laerte gave him a brief glance before turning towards the door. He was only waiting for one thing: Esyld’s return. Unless he found a way to escape her father’s sermon and join her in the settling night.
‘I know you have been through a terrible ordeal, but . . . every wound closes.’
The blacksmith hesitated. Laerte looked sharply towards him, his eyes blazing. Neither of them dared to say a word. Until at last, Laerte broke the heavy silence.
‘I will not forget my family,’ he muttered defiantly.
‘I’m not asking you to,’ Orbey seemed to excuse himself, raising his hands before him. ‘Not for anything in the world. What I’m trying to say is that this wound eating away at you, you need to put
it behind you. You must learn how to fight. For the memory of your father.’
‘You know nothing of him,’ the boy snapped, on the edge of tears.
By what right did this mere blacksmith evoke Oratio of Uster? Although he had been in his father’s service, he had no family bond with him. Any more than with his son.
‘I’m not asking you to forget him,’ Orbey insisted with greater conviction. ‘You can never do that. All wounds heal, although the scars remind us of them. And if the pain is less keen, it still cuts deep.’
He slowly stood up.
‘This loss, nothing will ever fill it. But . . . I dread that we will lose you if you don’t listen to Madog more closely.’
The boy did not have time to respond. The door opened with a sudden bang and two men, holding a third by the shoulders, entered the house shouting.
‘Come on, you cur! Tell them what you did!’
‘What is it?’ rumbled Meurnau.
‘It’s old Bastian from the Creeks house,’ explained one of the two men.
The third man did not attempt to hide his fear, his white hair tousled over a weathered face. Gaunt-looking, lost inside a thick cloak that fell to his worn-out, muddy boots, he cast wild eyes at the pair holding him in their grip.
‘Mercy . . . mercy,’ he begged in a high-pitched voice.
‘He was in Aëd’s Watch two days ago and not just to stock up on provisions. He’s a coward! A traitor!’ raged the other man.
Meurnau went to Bastian and gripped him by the throat.
‘What?’
‘I-I . . . I beg you,’ stammered Bastian.
‘What have you done?’
‘He’s sold us out,’ snarled one of the soldiers.
‘No, I-I just said . . .’
‘You said what?’ rasped Meurnau.
A distant voice interrupted the interrogation.
‘To arms! To
arms
! The Empire is coming!’
‘I didn’t want to,’ sobbed Bastian. ‘But they gave me money for my family. I told them you were in Braquenne, that you were protecting
Laerte of Uster. He gave me money so that my family could eat. The winter is hard, sir, and—’
‘Who did you tell?’
‘Captain Etienne Azdeki,’ the old man confessed. ‘We can’t do anything against a knight with the
animus
,’ lamented Madog.
‘Laerte!’ Meurnau called.
Outside, the voices of the soldiers could be heard beneath the flickering torches. Azdeki was coming. Of the tumult that followed, Laerte only had a confused memory. The lieutenants drew their swords, people ran to and fro, and there was an increasing din. Until finally Meurnau’s hands lifted the stunned boy and carried him to the other end of the room, near a small door.
‘Laerte, you have to go,’ he said.
When the boy did not move, he raised his voice.
‘Do you hear me, Laerte? It’s Azdeki! I don’t know if we can escape him. You must flee. At least we can lead him away from you. Flee, Laerte! Go!’
But Laerte still didn’t move. The lieutenants left by the front door, and he heard their war cries. He heard the dry ring of swords striking one another, screams, and a rising roar . . . Yet everything seemed so slow in the boy’s eyes, so surprisingly blurry, and . . .
The hand that slapped his cheek brought him out of his torpor, his heart leaping in his chest. The Empire. The Empire was here. Fear held him in its grip and would not let go.
‘Flee, Laerte! Go on!’ shouted Meurnau as he opened the door.
Without further hesitation, the boy plunged into the night, barely hearing the door slam behind him over the pounding of his heart. He fell to his knees on the frozen earth and the din of the battle became more distinct. He feverishly regained his feet. To his right, the gigantic shadows of the combatants were projected against a wall. Deformed, yet splendid and frightening, they sometimes merged together, haloed in the reddish light of the torches.
‘Laerte?’ called a small voice.
She appeared out of the night, her breath whistling and her cheeks crimson from running. There was fear in her eyes. In the distance, the clamour of the battle continued to resound.
‘Run,’ she said brusquely. ‘Go away.’
He stood there at a loss, without knowing what to do or where to
go, whether to fight or take flight, to die somewhere far from her or perhaps here in her arms or . . .
‘Go away, Laerte!
Go!
’
Her voice cracked like a whip, stinging him. She was not asking him to go, she was ordering it. Her fine features were twisted by a savageness that was quite unlike her.
‘
Go away!
’ she insisted.
He darted off into the night, making his way between the tall marsh grasses that lashed his face. He ran as fast as could, until the fighting was no more than a distant echo and only the icy starlight lit his path. His legs became heavy, his breathing painful, his throat dry and prickly, but he didn’t stop. Esyld’s voice repeated in his head, so harsh and brutal:
‘Go away, go, go away!’
His boots sank into stagnant water but still he went on. He almost became mired in a patch of thick sludge. He went on. He fell, scraping his knee against a jutting rock, and almost smothered himself in the mud as he wept. He got up and went on.
His chest was on fire and he felt dizzy. His breath rasped in his throat and his heart felt ready to explode; and tears ran down his mud-stained cheeks in a steady flow. There was only blackness before him, a series of barely distinguishable shadows, and the sound of hoots and snapping wood carried on the slow breeze. He was all alone out here, in the dark . . .
He fell forward. And this time he did not get up. There was nothing but pitch blackness and a long soothing silence. Then a murmur, like a distant chirping.
Laerte blinked. Something viscous, with a bitter taste, was obstructing his mouth. He coughed once, closing his eyes.
The wind caressed his cheek, lifting his filthy hair. He coughed again, harder this time, and gradually recovered his wits. He was lying on his belly among the tall grasses, sunk in the mud with part of his face immersed. He rose with a start before immediately folding in two, coughing up the soggy earth that was choking him. When he finally felt better, he stood up. He had no idea how long he’d been running. Swamps surrounded him for as far as the eye could see. Except for . . . protruding from the tall grasses, turned upon its side atop a small dry mound, he recognised the cart with the hornets’ nest. He decided to make his way towards it, taking stumbling steps. He was exhausted, his mind empty and he collapsed on the dry
ground a few yards from the cart and passed out again.
When he regained consciousness, a host of question assailed him. What would become of him now he was alone? What could he do? Where could he go? How would he survive? Had Meurnau fought off the attack? Esyld . . . she’d survived, he felt certain of it. She could not die. He would go find her and . . . no. He knew nothing for sure, except that Empire had killed his family and was hunting him like a cur. He was reduced to the state of a beast at bay.
Amidst his worries, he gave a cry of joy upon seeing the broken hornet’s nest lying on the ground. This simply discovery offered such relief that he almost sobbed. The Erain frog had stuffed itself full of insects, leaving only the dried-out empty husk of their shelter. The cart was suddenly as welcoming as any of the houses at Braquenne and the boy began to search the crates, looking for the means to arrange a comfortable hideaway. He spread old fabrics on the ground, devoured peaches from jars as if he hadn’t eaten for days, and finally fell asleep when the sun was at its zenith.
Over the following days, this consolation faded away to be replaced by a terrible sense of despair. Not a soul passed through the neighbouring marshes; Laerte was well and truly alone. Meurnau had probably died during the attack by the Imperial soldiers. The days became weeks and the spring arrived in a timely manner to warm the Saltmarsh’s breeze. Tormented by hunger pangs, Laerte had been forced to learn how to hunt hive frogs, remembering Esyld’s claims that their tender meat was similar to chicken.
He tried to make fire without success, managing to cut his hand several times in the process. He had to content himself with eating the frogs raw, almost vomiting with each mouthful. The flesh was slimy, the blood sticky, the nerves hard to chew. But it was the only food available to him. Everything he had learned from Esyld, which had seemed so useless at the time, he now used to survive. Because the marshes were a veritable breeding ground for frogs with multiple virtues. The mucus from one allowed him to prepare an ointment, while another turned out to be a nourishing dish.
Several times he pondered leaving his hideout and trying to reach Aëd’s Watch. But was he even certain of finding the right path through the swamps and, if he did, what would he find in the town? Meurnau and his men, if they had survived, would surely have combed the countryside looking for him. But what if they believed he was dead?
The days passed and his despair grew so oppressive that he became incapable of doing anything at all. He remained prostrate, famished and weary . . . and then came a morning when he finally came close to death and found he lacked the courage to face it. He finally stood up, and decided not to let himself die in this place.
The weeks became months, the mildness of spring became the heat of summer. Until that day when, moving through the tall grasses far from his lair, hunting hive frogs, he heard a voice roar:
‘
Azdeki!
Godsfuck! Tomlinn!’
Through the grasses, he could make out a man on horseback sweeping the air with his sword. And circling him were three growling rouargs.
‘Tomlinn! Azdeki!’
When one of the beasts leapt upon the knight, toppling both rider and steed, Laerte fought the urge to run away as fast as he could. But it was not morbid curiosity that led him to watch the massacre, no, it was a sense of vengeance. The Imperial troops had killed his family . . . and now it was if his own region was avenging the Count of Uster and his people. He stood up to get a better view of the man being devoured but then immediately crouched down again, nervous. In the distance he’d seen at least sixty other soldiers carrying heavy pieces of wood, parts of what looked like a dismantled bridge. When he dared to lift his head again, he watched them march away without any hint of concern for their comrade.