IV

We ate the birds.

He said there was nothing else to be found. That the forest was dead. The space between the trees  was nothing more than a tangle of briar and berry, with the strewn corpses of both bird and mammal scattered across the distance.

“T’were like after Soroden,” he had said, as the fats of the bloated crow dribbled and hissed into the flames below. 

I didn’t ask him if he was part of the battle or had just been there to loot the corpses. I suspected the latter, but didn’t wish to have my suspicions confirmed. It’s best not to know. The last battle before the wall was built. Before my years but in my father’s lifetime. The Great Constriction. When all whom were civil lost the fight against the spiralling undoing of humanity and our civilisation was reduced to everything I knew. 

He said there was nothing else, and that the fire would burn off the poison. The small creatures he had collected were the most recent dead. Most were too befouled. I was hungry. Despite my retching and the sight of the maggots blackening and melting as the heat reached them. 

I didn’t recall our passage through the forest to the clearing being encumbered with such sights, yet my vision was fixed on the ranger most of the journey up the hillside and through the trees. He was far enough ahead so that should I become distracted I would lose sight of him. He would probably return for me, yet I could not take that as unsaid, and had to ensure he never left my sight. Therefore I paid little heed to what I stepped over - or on. Had I so stepped through the corpses as he described in his sparse dialect?

It didn’t matter, there was the fact of no game, and corpses are what he brought. It would do me no good to utter my doubt of his version of events. I wasn’t equipped to hunt myself, and my first attempt at foraging fruits of the forest had not gone exactly as I had hoped. 

I chewed on the sour meat and watched the embers of the fire as it died. There would not be another lit, as the previous two nights. To keep the fire lit longer than necessary would be dangerous. I thought about engaging the ranger in conversation. He had spoken little since I hired his services at the inn, however he had still responded to my questions and even had some of his own. His demeanour hadn’t exactly thawed in the time we had spent together, yet he wasn’t completely against talk. 

Not this night however. Were it because if the climb up the hillside taking it’s toll on his aged frame, or simply a lack of willingness to leaving himself open to talk, but he had already lain down on his matt and turned his back to me. His breathing had slowed and I knew him to be asleep. Not deep enough that he would not be able to wake should the need arise. I guessed his kind to sleep well but light, ready to spring up, blade drawn, at the slightest shift in the atmosphere. 

Mayhap not. The ranger had seen too many moons perhaps. 

Yet he had been quick to save my life, and before. Not for my own sake I grant. The extra coin I had promised was his sole motivation. 

I shrugged and I chewed the meat and I watched. I listened to the night. 

There was nothing but the crackle of the fire and the light breathing from opposite. The forest at my back was still, silent. The breeze had dropped once more and the sky was naked, the stars bared. I finished what I had been chewing and discarded the bone to the fire. I tried not to think about what I had eaten, nor the fact that I had quite enjoyed it despite my initial revulsion. 

Hunger overrides everything else sometimes. 

I cast my mind back to two nights hence. I tried to recall what the ranger had told me as he carved out a rough map on the table with his dagger. He knew from where I had came despite me not disclosing that information to him. I suppose it would not be hard to place me, given that even my most rough-hewn wandering attire was princely compared to what I had seen every remnant of humanity be clothed in since I he’d left the shadow of the wall. Even our own guards were clad in muted greens and rags, such was the nature of their task. My manner of speech amused him, I could se the mockery in every nascent twitch of his features. I would need to adapt myself, I thought, if I was to make it to my destination.

He carved out a rough circle and spat on it. 

“Ye’re fae there,” he stated simply, before carving a rough line to another, smaller circle. “Crossroads, this’n.”

I nodded. Somehow the brief line he had etched didn’t do justice to the distance I had travelled nor the toll it had taken. How small and insignificant a measure looked compared to what one must endure to traverse it. It was nothing here, under pale tallow light. The wound on my arm, the one that I fear will never truly heal, was longer than it and would serve as a greater reminder. 

The crossroads inn. Only found because I finally happened upon another living soul that didn’t immediately want to pull my entrails out through my throat. I had been following a rough trail since that day’s dawn, my attention fixated on the mountains. I could only guess as to the direction the trail would take me, but surmised that so long as I was headed towards me designation, that would be a good thing indeed. 

I tripped upon it, not noticing it folded in on itself in pain. The size of a child with a head the size of a being larger than a fully grown man. It had wide dark eyes and pale green skin. The plague had taken it almost completely, and it was haunched and shivering in late morning sun. I knelt by it, ignoring my instinct to turn away in disgust. I had spent long enough at my mother’s side to not be turned away by plague. 

“Can I help you?” I asked it. 

It nodded and attempted to speak. All it was able to do however was murmur and mumble, black liquid in it’s cracked lips. 

I understood. It’s expression bore that of my mother when she had been close to the end. I couldn’t do for her what this creature was no doubt pleading with me to do. I stood and stepped back, now wincing, now recoiling, as it crawled it’s way towards me.

I was so consumed with pitiful attention for the creature that I didn’t hear the approach behind me. 

“T’want ending’”, a voice said, treacle in gravel. 

I turned as quickly as my backpack would allow and there was a small bearded man, some kind of farm or metalwork tool in his hand. His clothes were stained and torn, his boots caked in old mud. 

“I…can’t.” I said. 

He nodded and stepped towards me, his hand raised along with the heavy piece of iron. My hands went up, a plead bubbled in my lips until I realised his intention. I let him pass and he went to the small creature, it’s black eyes still fixed on me. 

The metal came down upon it’s large and pitiful head, the sound of overripe fruit under heel. Two more and it was still upon the path. Something warm on my face, I thought it blood from the contents of the creatures skull. I had seen a small arc in the second raising of the tool. I put a finger to my cheek and took it under my eye. Clear. I had shed a tear for the creature and I did not know why. 

The small man stood, still holding the wicked tool at his side. I couldn’t read his face. 

“Thank you,” I stammered, “for your kindness.”

He shrugged and knelt back down to the creature, running his hands through it’s clothes.

I thought then. Of the trail and the mountains. Of the previous two days. I thought and I dared.

“I wonder,” I began, talking to his back as he continued to search through the pitiful things belongings. “I wonder if you would accompany me. I have far to travel and am in need of a guide.”

He continued rummaging, and I began to speak again, thinking he hadn’t heard, when he elicited a small gasp of satisfaction and stood, pocketing whatever it was he had taken from the creature. I only caught a glimpse of what it could be. It didn’t look like coin, was instead small and blackened. Twisted. It was nothing to do with my own business. 

Silence and I felt his gaze on me. I knew then he was sizing me up. He thought perhaps that I had something else he wished to take. I saw the knuckles on his weapon hand whiten slightly. His body tensing. 

We stood facing each other like this for a few moments before he relaxed a little, obviously deciding that whatever he had taken from the small creature was enough that day. 

“Ain’t a ranger me,” he said. “Thar.” He pointed, along the trail. “Ye’ll find one afore dark. Hear the place ’n’ smell it ye will. In thar an’ jus tell barkeep Grint sent ye’ for me broth’r.”

I thanked him and thought about passing him some coin, if I could trust he would let me live after espying the purse. I decided against it and instead made good along the trail until dark, when I saw the welcoming light in the distance. He watched me go, standing over the small prone body until he was out of sight. I walked wondering when he would change his mind and coma after me, but he never did. 

Pagailon said he had no brother. I didn’t push him on it. Yet he agreed regardless. 

And the map was drawn.

Beyond the inn was a longer line, at least three times the length. Another circle, more lines and circles. Then the rough etch of the mountains. 

“What’s that one?” I had asked, my finger resting on a large circle midway through the course. 

“Guffernell,” he replied. “Rest there afore further. Tis a good people.”

I found it difficult to believe there was enough civilisation out here to have settlements, even when I was seated in an inn that defied everything I had been told. 

“They’re savages little brother,” Ashe had told me once. He had served beyond the kingdom for a short time, said he’d seen much despite me scraping him and knowing he’d spent the season in the garrison playing cards and masturbating. “They have no structure, no civilisation. They just rut and eat people.”

I should have known Ashe to be lying. Although to which extent I wasn’t sure. There was structure here, the trails and roads weren’t all just from the times before. Some were maintained, if not new. The inn was old yet there was fresh wood there. I had expected a barren wasteland. Now there was talk of something big enough to be a village or town of sorts. 

At least, that’s what I took Guffernell to be. Mayhap I was misguided. Time would tell if I made it so far. 

The trail beyond that led into a forest at the base of the mountains, the foothills he said arising from that and then on to our destination. 

Beyond the inn however, he mentioned the vale. 

“Here’n,” he said before a large gulp of whatever dark and sweet smelling liquid he had in his cracked tankard. It ran down his chin and he wiped it away with his sleeve before belching loudly. “If ye pass thru here’n all, we chancing our destination alright.”

“What is that?” I asked, looking closely at the erratic stab marks in the wood.

“Th’ vale, ye ken it?”

“Of course I don’t know it, that’s why I need you. If you think I’m going to take that tone then -”

The movement was so quick as to belie it occurring at all and my first thought was that the knife had always been there, pinning my sleeve to the table. My throat clicked, my mouth dry.

He leaned across the table, the corners of his mouth pulled up slightly, and pulled the knife from the wood. 

“Th’ vale then. Ye’ll ken it soon enough. Na leave me be. First light we’ll ‘ead.”

I rose then and grabbed my heavy bag from the floor. He looked no further upon me, and I excused myself with a murmur. I had already procured a room and went straight there. The door had a heavy bolt that I was sure to push firmly into place, before wedging an old wooden chair underneath the latch. There was the remains of a tallow candle on the small table with three bent matches beside it. I lit it and in the meagre light checked the room as best I could. I may have despised my brothers, but I had learned from them. Bryln used to sneak into my room when we were children, making his own way in through a gap in the wood panelling. I made sure ever since to check not just doors and windows, but walls and floorboards. 

When I was finally content that there was no route in to the room, I fell on to the foul smelling box bed and fell into a deep sleep, the days exertions taking it’s toll. Dreams of small plagued and frail creatures crawling towards me, begging to be released. 

The fire had gone out. The wind back up a little but a change in direction meant it wasn’t as cold as it was earlier. I was content to rest my head against my pack once more. The darkness was almost absolute, apart from something that I could see through what I presumed to be the gap in the trees, towards the mountain. At first I thought it was a firefly, then another, then a dozen more. Somewhere between where I lay and my destination was a myriad of small fires. I wondered what they were for and who had lit them. 

Not for long, as sleep claimed me once more.