A memory of war and sola.., p.6
A Memory of War and Solace, page 6
There were some outlying farms visible, but it was clear that the villagers made much of their living by the quarry traffic. We could see at least two smithies and a large wainwright’s yard with several low, heavy-timbered wagons in various states of construction or repair. A taller stone building with two floors and many windows and an attached stables was surely an inn.
On the green across the road was a large camp of tents. A pennant of blue and yellow flew over the largest tent, though I couldn’t make out the device. For all of the gossip and rumors of war, seeing soldiers camped beside the village filled me with unease, and not a little bit of excitement.
I looked to Sem to take the lead, and we descended the hill towards the road. I kept my eyes moving, taking in the soldiers’ encampment and the evening foot traffic between buildings of the town.
On closer inspection, I could see the flag over the camp carried a charge of a stylized beetle in black and a yellow chevron over a blue field. The soldiers by and large were ignoring the town, focused instead on their evening meal and camp chores—some were still erecting their tents. They all wore gray, with the same blue and yellow flashing on their tunics. I didn’t think much of their watch—if we had wanted, we could likely have crept straight into their camp without raising an alarm.
By the time we were abreast of the first buildings of Balifere, I started to sense a distinct tension. I could tell Sem was aware of it, and even the mules seemed to be picking up on it, their steps turning hesitant. I scanned the visible townsfolk and saw them watching us with furtive glances. We kept the mules on the road and moving steadily until we reached the inn.
Most of the people on the street had their eyes locked on Sem, tracing the scars that covered their body and eyeing their swords. With so little attention on me, I stayed quiet, content to sit upon Beatrice and observe.
After growing up first in the Freelands and then in Reft, I was startled by how alike the people looked. I had known that the people of Torfall were of a type, pale-skinned and smooth light hair, but to see a whole village who had the same coloring and sharp features as Eelie was disconcerting. The men were all dressed alike, trousers and coats in somber colors, and wore hair and beards long. Fewer women were about, but they all seemed to braid their hair and while their dresses were more colorful than the mens’ clothes, they seemed to all be cut from the same pattern.
I found myself fixating on variations: this woman had her hair braided in a more complex pattern than any others I could see. One man stood out for his large pot belly and bald head.
None of them smiled.
A large man wearing a blue sash over his coat came out of the inn and confronted us. The others seemed relieved that he stepped forward. When he spoke, his voice was gruff and firm.
“I don’t know what you think you’re here for, but we have nothing here for the likes of you. Please leave.”
Sem pulled the gray to a halt and Beatrice stopped as well. Sem looked the man up and down for a moment before speaking.
“A strange greeting for an innkeeper to give to travelers on the road,” they said quietly.
“Inn’s full,” the innkeeper said.
I glanced up at the several dark windows in the upper floor.
Whether he saw my look or simply felt the weight of his own lie, the innkeeper blushed before speaking again. “We don’t want any more trouble. Would you please just go on your way?”
I looked out at the handful of people that had gathered behind the innkeeper and saw their eyes averted, their shoulders hunched. Any more trouble. There was something going on here beyond their fear and hatred of us, but I couldn’t quite piece it together. I felt like I was missing something critical.
A man with huge arms and shoulders came up from behind the innkeeper. He wore a leather apron and carried a large hammer with a heavy iron head. He, at least, seemed willing to meet Sem’s eyes. His face carried a grim expression.
“We don’t want you here!” called a feminine voice plaintively from somewhere within the crowd.
“You’ll get the same that—” someone else began angrily, before he was shushed by others nearby.
I kept my eyes scanning the crowd and the road ahead and behind. The townsfolk were not boxing us in yet, but between the blacksmith and a handful of other village men with hate in their eyes, I began to worry what spark might set tempers alight. Despite the innkeeper’s words, there seemed to be plenty of opportunity for more trouble here.
I glanced back at the soldiers’ camp, but they seemed to have no interest in the goings on. My skin began to crawl with the sense of impending action. The gathered villagers were no longer silent… there was a low current of murmur and unease.
A newcomer dressed in a gray tunic slashed with blue and yellow stepped out of the inn common room and pushed forward through the crowd to reach the innkeeper. All I saw was pale blonde hair tied back in a tail over a sun-baked face, and then the newcomer was grabbing the innkeeper’s arm and speaking urgently in his ear. I saw Sem’s hand shift slightly towards their sword.
The innkeeper turned sharply to the soldier and shook his head, a small movement. “Soldier, I don’t care what your commander said. This is our town.”
The soldier took a step back and drew himself up sharply. “Mayor,” he said formally, and loud enough for the whole crowd to hear, “I’ll thank you to refer to me by my rank, never mind that I’ve supped in your hall. It’s in my company’s standing orders to keep the peace. If any of you choose to break it this night, you can begin by testing our blades. We’ll have no brawling in the street!”
The innkeeper and mayor shied back as if slapped, and turned his eyes down to his feet, then looked out over the townsfolk. He didn’t look at us.
I watched as the soldier scanned the crowd then turned his eyes to us. I saw him flinch slightly at Sem’s scars, linger thoughtfully on their swords, and then turn to me. His gaze lingered on my scar and then he saw me watching him and turned away.
He was younger than I first had thought. His sun-burned forehead and nose made him appear weathered and hard, but he wore no beard and I guessed his age at no more than twenty. On the shoulder of his tunic was sewn a short red ribbon fixed with a silver badge that I guessed indicated an officer’s rank, though I couldn’t guess what. He wore a sword at his waist and silver-worked boots.
I could see him deciding which of us to address. Ultimately, he turned to Sem as the elder of the two of us. “My men and I have no quarrel with you, and will defend your right to walk the public roads. But it may be safer for everyone if you did move on.” He seemed embarrassed at this speech, but stood his ground.
Sem said nothing more, simply nodded and nudged their gray back to moving. Beatrice and I followed, though she had picked up on my tension and whickered softly, her steps quick and her eyes rolling.
We kept a steady pace down the road that passed along the village. I was well aware of the eyes that traced our progress. Despite the soldier’s warnings, the blacksmith followed us all the way to the edge of the town, as if making sure we didn’t steal any coppers on the way out.
As we descended the next rise and the village and its eyes were well out of sight, Sem turned off the road towards the woods that covered the rolling hills to the eastern horizon. I hadn’t lost the tension in my shoulders, and we were among the trees before I felt I could take an unencumbered breath.
“Were you expecting that reaction from them?” I asked.
“Something stinks in that town,” Sem said.
I didn’t ask them where they were leading us, but I started to spot signs of a trail. I doubt I would have noticed except for my years living in my wood. It was nothing so blatant as a worn path or broken branches… it was only a subtle difference in the fabric of the wood. There were none of the telltales of a Warding or other protections.
We rode for another hour, with Sem turning here and there under the shadowed canopy. We were riding now only by whatever starlight and moonlight filtered through the leaves above and would soon need to camp, if only to let the mules rest.
I was about to suggest a stop when I smelled it.
It was not a strong scent. Not wafting smoke or the warming smell of hot coals. This was a faint acrid odor of cold charred wood; of wet ash and weathered desolation and something else. It might have been a day-old campfire, except that I could smell it filtering through the wood and not yet see a trace. The mules were restive.
We rounded a low rise into a narrow glade and halted. Charred timbers stood checked and crumbling in a blackened circle amidst the litter of the forest floor.
I held Beatrice still with the tension in my back, and scanned the ruins and the surrounding wood. Sem and I both dismounted and I took the gray and Beatrice to the edge of the glade where I set their hobbles and feed bags. They were both spooked and unhappy.
I returned to stand beside Sem, stepping gingerly and still searching for some hint as to what we had found. Sem wore a look as dark as a storm, their brow was pinched and their lips a hard line.
My eyes were already well-adjusted to the darkness, but it still took some time before I could make sense of what I saw. It had been a small building, little more than a hut. Beside the burned and broken remains of the hut was a fire pit, and now I began to understand the shapes I was seeing, I noted the iron cook pot tumbled on its side, the scatter of split firewood that was once neatly stacked, weeds just beginning their inevitable encroachment across the charred earth.
And I saw the bodies.
There was nothing to be done for them. All of this had happened days ago, perhaps weeks ago. The only consolation I could find was that there was little enough left to rot. The fire had seen to that.
My eyes darted to Sem’s face and I could see them fixed upon the bodies. The larger of the two burned corpses had been an adult. I stepped into the burned circle and knelt beside them.
Without touching the remains, I could still see some evidence of violence. The skull had been smashed, probably before the fire had been set. They lay on their side, curled slightly with one arm stretched out towards the smaller body.
I had to calm my breathing before I could look at the smaller one. I can’t imagine the child could have been fourteen—they looked so small and helpless. Sem’s words came to me unbidden: They have no place in their world for those like us. The child’s body was curled tightly into a posture of pain and fear. Their arms covered their head and their legs were drawn up in a futile attempt to defend themself from whoever had come for them, but I could see they too bore signs of a vicious blow to the face.
I stood, wiping tears from my eyes, and moved back away to the edge of the glade. I took several deep breaths. Neither of us spoke much that night, but by silent accord we moved the mules further into the wood before setting a makeshift camp. I couldn’t stomach the idea of a fire and it seemed Sem felt the same. I had no appetite in any case, so we simply curled up in our cloaks.
I spent most of the night watching Sem’s eyes staring into the distant darkness. After some hours, I began to feel the need for sleep, so I stood and stepped out a circle of Warding around our small campsite. I didn’t trust the villagers’ fear of us enough to leave our safety to chance tonight.
Even so, my sleep was fitful and restless. A part of me was filled with rage at what had been done, and I wanted nothing short of violent, wrathful retribution. Another part of me was bone-tired and full of sorrow and dejection.
It all amounted to a wearying sense of frustration and helplessness. We had reached the end of our quest, and there was nothing we could do now for either of them.
FIVE
As the first light of dawn was filtering through the trees, we buried Benni and Ash. Sem did the work, cutting across their forearm with their short sword and letting the pain fill them. The ground parted and swallowed the two bodies deep into the earth where they had fallen. Sem left the burned remains of Ash’s hut as they were. They said nothing, spoke no words and the anger I had seen on their face last night was gone. They walked back to the mules, silently tying a strip of cloth around their arm to staunch the blood.
We mounted and rode together deeper through the wood, no particular destination and no deliberate direction other than away from that place. We were moving eastward and a little southward, and the terrain was rising steadily, growing more hilly as the wood thinned. It was mostly pine now, with large boles towering over us and spreading their branches into the sky. The ground the mules covered was a deep, spongy peat of rust-brown pine needles.
It was early afternoon when hunger and exhaustion caught up with us. We had eaten nearly the last of our apples as we rode, but they were small and wrinkled, and not enough to sustain us. In perfect accord, we stopped the mules and dismounted in a low depression near the top of a hill. A copse of pines shaded our campsite and gave us a source of fallen wood. I carried our cook pot down hill, following a shallow ditch and the faint sounds of water.
Talkative was not an accusation that could be made against Sem, but I was beginning to be concerned and frustrated at their silence. As I hunted for the water source that I could hear, I determined to push them to speak to me about what we had seen.
Between an outcrop of pale gray stone and a steep grade of clay, I found the narrow trickle of a creek. It took some labor, shifting stones and breaking up the clay boundary, until the water ran clear enough and deep enough to fill the pot without silt. Once done, I walked back to our campsite, catching the smell of smoke.
Whether due to the pine wood, the bright light of midday, or simply distance, the smell was cleaner somehow, and I was glad to find that it didn’t carry any hints of the horror we had found the previous night. Sem was squatting by the small fire set in a ring of clay they had cleared of the soft loam of the forest floor.
I set the pot by the fire to boil and sat down a few steps away watching them for a moment. They didn’t look up at me; didn’t acknowledge me, and I decided I had had enough.
“Tell me of Ash,” I said firmly.
Sem looked up at me sharply, then off to the horizon.
I waited. It was a skill I had learned from Turin. I centered myself, breathing steadily and slowly. I felt a slight breeze through the pines and listened to the crackle of the fire. I let my fingers comb the mulch of the forest floor.
It took a long, long time before Sem spoke. When they did it was quiet, nearly a whisper. “Ash and I met in the early days of Reft. It was hardly more than a circle of tents in those days, and we hadn’t yet found the Vale or the mountain. We moved from place to place, trying to find a home, but also trying to find what we could be.”
I said nothing. I simply listened.
“Ash was never going to be one to settle. They were too contrary. Always… taniéne ket i batte. You know the saying? ‘An ember in the thatch.’”
I struggled to avoid any expression of surprise. I felt a pang of sadness that I would never know the person that Sem labeled a contrary firebrand.
“Those mountains are full of old forts like Redwatch, and we found them and some wanted to stay and make them ours. But Ash always argued that if we found a place that others had built, then others must know of it, and would come back to take it from us someday.”
Sem’s eyes came back to the fire, watching the flames dance. “It was the Vale we found first, you know. We knew that it could be a haven for us and for all the others like us. We weren’t there ten days before Ash decided to leave. To return here to Torfall where they had been mistreated and hated and chased out.”
They looked at me then. “That was Ash. They could have gone to the Freelands or to Somiere. There was need for us there too, and far less pain and animosity waiting.” Sem grinned. “But Ash settled here because they knew people would spit on them and hate them and fear them all the more for being a Torfallin nyssa.”
Sem sighed; a long, exhausted-sounding breath. It was as if the weight of rage and sorrow of last night was leaving their body in a stream of tainted air. Instead of deflating, they seemed to be strengthened by the release. Their shoulders straightened and their head lifted.
They peered at me suspiciously and then grunted softly. Sem stood and began preparing our meal, dipping the small tea kettle into the pot of water and setting it aside before pouring a measure of rice into the bubbling water. They stretched and pulled the small shovel from their pack, starting off down the hill to dig a privy trench.
After a time, I moved to the cooking pot and stirred the rice. The water for tea was bubbling, so I pulled it further from the fire and tossed in a handful of leaves from a small pouch in Sem’s pack. A bird trilled somewhere from over the hill, and another answered.
Something—I don’t know what it was I felt—made the muscles in my back tense. I looked to the place where I had laid down my pack and walking stick, and stood, moving slowly to pick up the stick and don my ratty cloak. I let my mind and heart visit the pain I carried always at leaving Kari and Fanti behind in Reft without a word.
Footsteps came rapidly up the hill, and I recognized Sem’s gait. They came up from behind a low snarl of trees and moved directly to the fire, upending the cook pot over the coals, half-cooked rice and all.
They exchanged the shovel for their swords, and we moved quietly up the hill from the cover of one tree to the next. I let Sem take the lead as it seemed they understood more of what we were both feeling than I.
The closer we came to the crest of the hill the lower they crouched in their movement. I had a harder time of it, being taller. I was glad of my daily exercises by the time we were peering down the other side.
We waited tensely, neither of us making a sound. I was still not sure what we waited for, but after a few minutes of near silence—the wood around us was still alive with all those subtle shifts and skitters of a living forest—I heard the bird trill a third time.
