The wilderlands, p.8
The Wilderlands, page 8
He worked again through the next day and it went much the same.
When the second night had ended, Knalc let himself sleep some too—or more like his scars and work and suffered-sorrows finally caught up with him and he fell asleep.
And when he came to waking, he found the rest had already roused.
He summed the others were waiting on his waking. Calm as moss. He smirked. “Didn’t kill me in my sleep?”
Dhorena’s hand went tight around the leather of her sword hilt, but no silver flash was summoned.
They started their leave-taking, got packed and clothed and road-ready. Red was more wakeful now, still exhausted and still needing to be sleigh-tugged, but at least he had crept away from Death. Knalc’s joints were battle-sore and his body was tired from sleepless nights, but he managed to pull Red along and keep pace with Dhorena and her brother.
It was slow moving they did, but at least they had got to moving.
“By the Road we’d only be a week out from Illmiv,” Red said—Knalc had to pull him hard through thick underbrush, roots and vine and crawling things snagged and caught him as they trudged. “Going through the Wilderlands though, I couldn’t say.”
“I don’t know how Road-time turns to Wilder-time,” Knalc said, yanking hard to pull him out of a rut.
“It’s shy of two-hundred miles if that helps.”
“Don’t know miles. You know boar-runs?”
“No. How far’s a boar-run?”
“Far as it wants.”
Only the Wilderlands laughed.
“Wilderfolk don’t measure distance,” Knalc offered. “We walk a day and that’s how far we walk. No miles, just how far we know it is. If I haven’t been to a place, I don’t know what it is walking.”
Red sighed. “Then I’ll do my best guess work. Say that by going off the Road we do a little less than double distance. That’s four-hundred miles. In the caravan we did twenty miles a day. Out here on foot we can do, at most, ten miles a day. So with luck we can do maybe forty days. But accounting for delays—”
“We get there when we get there,” Knalc said. “Or we die afore hand.”
“We’re headed south by southwest now,” Red said, trying to keep a fight from stirring. “If we keep going this way, are there any dangers you know of? There’s only one I can think of—”
“The River of Tears and Screams,” Knalc recalled.
“A place called the Sea of Mist.”
“Same place.”
“I remember that,” Dhorena said. “When we first left Illmiv we spent nearly half a day on a bridge dangling over a swirl of mist.”
They’d all seen the mist, but none had been through it, and only Knalc had even heard tell of what happened in the Mist.
This is something I know none of you have witnessed, save maybe one, and I’d bet my sight you don’t remember the horrors of that place—you were babeish and far away when you marked them.
The Valforians called it the Sea of Mist because that was all they saw—those who didn’t build the bridge going over least ways—most just saw mist stretching out to the horizon and nothing else below. The River of Tears and Screams is what Wilderfolk called it ‘cause, unlike the Valforians, they had to wade through it. Imagine having to navigate through mist and madness. Ain’t no sun down there. Ain’t no markers to tell you’re headed right. Just you and whatever you bring. Mist is a small but tricksome god. Men can’t walk straight down there ‘cause Mist messes with their heads. Makes some see things they want or things they don’t. Twists ‘em up inside. And those who get lost in Mist ain’t dead, but they sure as sin ain’t alive. They wander through the mist and are likely to kill or maim who or whatever they bump into down in their white prison, doomed to never wander out. And as they wander, they scream: screaming at what they see or what they want or what they had or ‘cause their minds are gone to rot and all that’s left in their head is mist and madness.
The only cause for Valforians not calling it the River of Tears and Screams is ‘cause they travel in wagons above it and most times can’t hear the screaming over the rattling of the wheels and the easy chatting they make as they glide over the deep horrors. They just see the mist, and to them it’s peaceful-like.
“I know we said we’d stick to the Wilderlands,” Red said. “But the bridge might be our safest option. It’s at the narrowest point of the Sea of Mist, so it only goes ten miles across. Even as badly beaten as we are, we ought to be able to travel that in a day then cut back into the Wilderlands.”
“Yes,” Knalc said. “But if Valforians do show up, then we’re ripe for trampling over.”
“What would be so bad about going through it?” Dhorena asked. “It’s just mist.”
“Then why did you build a bridge over it?”
Dhorena narrowed her eyes at him.
Red sighed. “In our own tongue, please?”
Knalc held up his hands. “I never walked in the mist. I never walked on the bridge. But if you want me to choose, I choose mist. I know of Wilderfolk who got past Mist alive. I don’t know a soul that’s ever walked the bridge and lived.”
The girl gritted herself. “We’ve walked it. We’ve lived.”
“It’s different.”
“What’s your plan of action?” Red asked.
Knalc considered this. True, he’d heard tell those who made it through the River of Screams and Tears—“mist-walkers” they were called. In all the tellings he’d heard, no Mist-Walker was ever keen on jumping back in. Those who did weren’t ever named Mist-Walker twice. Knalc knew there was god-scheming at work in the mist—from the Lost, to fog-toads, to Mist himself. But the one thing every storyteller sings of is the mist-madness. Not knowing where you true-tread ‘cause you can’t see sun or stars. Keepin’ straight, he knew, would be the first-worst problem.
“We find the bridge,” Knalc said. “But we don’t tread over it. We walk its shadow. Follow its foundations.”
Red took a spell to think that through. “Yes … yes. That’s a good idea. You know anyone who’s tried that before?”
“No. Not as far as I know. Most don’t get so close to the Road unless they’re raiding. No one raids the bridge, always soldiers there.”
“Your idea is probably best then,” Red said. “Find the bridge, walk under it, and hope for the best. Dhorena—”
The girl flinched. “You’re not allowed to address me by—”
“There’s no one here who can fault me but you.”
She didn’t respond with more than a nod.
“I was just saying,” Red went on, “I hope you’re ready to use that sword of mine you’ve been hefting around.”
Knalc didn’t look at her when she spoke, but he gut-felt her eyes boring into him when she answered. “I’m ready.”
And so, they sauntered bridge-ward.
I won’t flood your head with all the doings of all the days. They ate and slept, they walked and pissed. Ain’t no flower tongue that can tell what happened in those days and keep you edge-chomping honest-like. I’m a well-seasoned teller and know better than to false-speak or waste your time. All you need know is, come the time they spotted the bridge, Red had finally managed to get walkin’ again. Wasn’t much speedier than a hobble though, which was good as not since Dhorena had weeks left afore her limp was like to heal.
A few times he took his steel back from her to see if he could make it sing again. A swing and side-snick and he’d draw a good hum from it. But his muscles were pain-sogged and he wasn’t yet used to missing an arm, so he’d tire afore he could start a tune of worthy sort.
Inside three sun shifts they found the bridge.
Now, you—yes you, child—I know you’ve seen the bridge afore, or at least what’s left of it. Same as you’ve seen Mist from far looking. Don’t blush at me like that. I knew you to go poking places you were told not to. A hard-clung habit if you ask me. I remember when you were little more than a babe, running and whim-wandering for as long as you could out-wile the arms trying to snatch you up. I know you done seen what’s left, and I know you ‘ain’t gone and forgotten that sight.
You seen what it is now, but I want you to imagine what it was then.
Stone and wood as man-made miracle, stretchin’ a half day’s walk and hanging over nothing. Hands of stone reached up out of the fog like the earth itself was trying to escape that place—they held aloft deadwood that stretched between ‘em.
It’s said the deadwood would be changed by Valforians when it came rot-loose. That’s why the hands holdin’ it were made of stone, ‘cause stone don’t rot. Many died making that bridge, and it’s whispered that the workers wanted to escape the mist bad enough that those who couldn’t find rock to lay would seize the bodies of the dead and build ‘em into the stone that held the bridge. The stone don’t rot, but bone and flesh and dead men do. ‘Course, no Valforian has gone looking hard at those pillars since they were built.
“Is this the right spot?” Knalc asked, though he already knew the answer as they came to hill crest.
Knalc knew it must be right ‘cause he hadn’t imagined it half as well-made as it was. He was looking on it for the first time and had to remind himself this wasn’t no god-feat, but mortal-made. Though he couldn’t see how. The bridge was hard for the Wilderfolk to fathom—a wedding of wood and stone that held you in the air was too much, too much.
“Yeah,” Red said. “This is the place.” He pointed with his good arm to a far hill overlooking the bridge. “That’ll be the guard tower.”
Knalc had been so shock-fixed on the bridge he hadn’t seen that distant peak. He was flabber-jawed, though tried not to show it. It was too big for a tent or a hut and, like the bridge, it was made of stone and wood and man’s hubris. It was like the spine of Grandma Dirt had been twisted skyward.
“That a castle?” Knalc cowered.
“No,” Red said. “Just a tower.” All the Valforians kept their heads even. They’d seen these earth-torn atrocities before—they’d built them. “The guard they have stationed there might be able to spot us, but they’ll mainly be watching for anyone who isn’t meant to be crossing the bridge.” He nodded at the rocky descent before them. “With the girl’s bad leg and with me still recovering, someone should try to find us a safe way down this hill.”
Knalc side-eyed him, yet relented and started to shamble down the rock-smat hillside grumbling. “Lazy fucking Valforian.”
The girl waited for Knalc to waddle out of hearing before she took to whispering, pointing at the tower. “Abrum’s Watch is right there. I say we let him try to find a way down that hill and make for the tower. There’ll be upward of twenty soldiers there with food and fire. We go there, we rest up, and they can saddle us back to Illmiv. We don’t have to stumble through the Wilderlands, we don’t have to deal with the mist or this man.”
The boy couldn’t speak, but he understood enough. “Food and fire” he knew he liked and hearing his sister speak of them and point to a place in spitting distance made his eyes go wide. He tugged at the man in red’s coat, pleading to go there too.
Red looked from the tower back to Knalc halfway down the hill. Then back to the tower. He shook his head.
Her hand went to his steel and he spotted it just as fast.
She didn’t draw. Though her fingers hugged the hilt, his fingers hugged her wrist. The two of ‘em were locked in their cold company for a mite of time. Until Red spoke again.
“Are you going to slay me with my own sword? Will that avenge your mother? Will that help your brother?”
She gritted her teeth and hardened her gaze. “Why?”
“Hmm?”
“Why don’t we go to the tower?”
“Hmm.” He pointed to the tower’s peak. “There should be a flame at the top of the tower. The flame of Aprheus is required to be kept lit on all Valforian buildings outside the walls—the light of the civilized world—meant to scare off all those who haven’t been touched by the protection of Aprheus.
“Now, it’s most likely the flame is out and it’ll be re-lit within an hour. Or, less likely, the soldiers posted here have gotten lax and it’ll be a while before someone bothers to reignite the flame again … but we’ve already been attacked by Wilderfolk and those Wilderfolk were killed by Wastefolk. I can’t see any sign of battle or siege from here, but given what we’ve seen we might have to assume the tower was taken.”
The Wilderlands hummed around them.
Dhorena cursed. “So you think if we go to Abrum’s Watch then there’s as good a chance we’ll run into Wilder or Wastefolk as our people?”
“Not quite an equal chance,” Red considered. “But given what we’ve been through already, I don’t like the odds. But if Abrum’s Watch has been taken by Wilderfolk then our friend doesn’t know about it or else he might have tried to convince us all to go to the tower.”
Dhorena looked down the hill. Knalc was nearly at the bottom. “He might know. He might try to run to the tower as soon as he gets to the bottom. He’ll get there and he’ll tell his people where we are and then surround us.”
Red watched him careful now too. “Maybe … but if he does, it’ll at least be to capture and not kill us. If he wanted us dead he could have seen to that already.”
“Speak for yourself.”
He laughed. “I’ll try to in the future … you’ve been conscious more than I have these past few days. Why do you suppose he’s helping us as much as he is?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “He’ll help us, we’ll get what we need, and then we’ll see him dead. If he decides he doesn’t want to help us anymore, then I’ll just kill him outright.”
He was quiet for a bit. “You remember how to kill a man?”
“You stab him until he stops moving.”
“… True enough.”
Knalc was back afore too much longer, bruised from a tumble or two he took while scouting. “Think I got a way down.”
“Right,” Red motioned. “Lead the way then.”
Knalc hefted the boy onto his back. This—at first—scared the child, but before long he was clapping with joy. The Wildman led them shambling down the hill. It was slower going with Knalc having to warn of every bad step that might send ‘em to a fall.
All the way, there was no movement from the tower.
In time, they came to the bottom of that descent—no more bruised or bloodied than before. As far as they could tell, no one had yet spotted ‘em.
They weren’t far from the bridge now.
As they wound about that rock strewn path, the Valforians saw almost at once that there were no guards. Gone were the bridge-keepers to judge-keep the bridge safe from the unsavory folk who might pass. Red and the girl passed a look between them.
To Knalc, the unmanned structure wasn’t strange. The bridge seemed strong and sound enough to tend itself. What could men do to protect brick and stone?
They came near enough to hear the creaking of wood in the wind and smell the mist as it swirled and spiraled, unending.
“Here is fine,” Red play hissed. “If we get much closer we’ll get spotted from the tower for sure.”
Knalc nodded and went to the edge of the mist-drop. He leaned over, looking straight down as he did.
I can’t describe nothing to you, children. Do you understand me? I can’t describe nothing. ‘Cause that’s what it was. Nothing. Just white. Spinning down there like a thick stew of rotten sort. Yes, it moved. Yes, it was and is. But all of it was nothing.
Knalc staggered back so as to see the world again—he was feeling fluster-headed looking down that drop. He couldn’t see the bottom and he’d long ago lost any love for heights. He looked instead at the bridge; he was still thunder-struck that it hadn’t been a god’s work. By his eyes it looked new enough that it might have been built just yesterday. True, it seemed to float above the mass of mist, but the mist still breathed up and the bits that hung around the bridge were thick, and bit by bit they made it impossible to see on past the first hundred paces.
Anything could have been under that bridge.
“Walking under the bridge,” Knalc said to himself. “Not how I planned to die.”
“What was that?” Red called from behind.
“Nothing,” Knalc said, then pointed into the mist. “I’ll guess you still want me to find a way down afore we go so as to guide you?”
“Ideally.”
Knalc grunted and grumbled again, “Lazy fucking Valforian.”
He did as he was asked and found them a way down. It wasn’t even a sun shift before they were all wading into that stew. Mist was the only god that knew them down there.
They sank out of sight and sanity.
That, I think, is where I’ll end tonight’s telling. We’ve got sinking of our own to get to, heading toward slumber or some kind of shut-eyed resting. I’ll be up a while yet, in case our hunters trundle back in the blackest hour of night. Winterwind and other howling deadly things will be hot on their heels, like as not, and they ought to have someone to help them settle after their hard hunting.
Go, find your blankets and bedmates for the night. Come back tomorrow and I’ll tell you what happened in Mist. I’ll tell you about the Wilderlands’ last wizard, I’ll talk on Dhorena’s trials, and dying gods and other terrible, terrible things. Rest now and we’ll finish this tale tomorrow.
Ears! Ears! Attend me now!
Douse your worrying and come close to the fire with what kin you can hold. Treasure them. Don’t yet despair for those who were unheard from in the night, for they are a worthy sort who have faced many winters and, if you ask me, will face many more with a smirk as they recall the horrendous here-now.
