Richard

After the attack, finding new homes for so many people had proven to be difficult. Richard had only been able to employ twelve of the group and even then, only singles. Rehoming a family was proving a lot harder. Some had been taken in by their own families, but others had no family to take them in. Stoss and Cole had between them taken in thirty, having been better equipped to house a family but that still left eight families.

The first few days had been the hardest, they’d been unable to move the group from the small clearing until night had fallen. Escorting around fifty people in pitch darkness across the fields to his barn had proven challenging and even hand on shoulder being led it had been a slow, heart racing few moments. The barn had been large enough for the adults. Six of the eight children were under Esther’s care in the main house, utilising Willow’s empty room as a makeshift nursery. They would be smuggled out the following day to be reunited with any remaining family members. The other two children would be reunited with their parents the following day when they could return to the city and collect them. Their families would support them until they could find gainful employment now that the Resistance no longer had need of their talent.

Over the next few days, Richard slowly moved twelve of the singles into the dormitory style rooms he gave his employees, a total of 5 women and 6 men. He was already over capacity and the extra drain on the farm concerned him but what else could he do? These people were his comrades in arms, how could he abandon them?

The last eight families had remained hidden in Richard’s barn, being looked after but all but prisoners. Everyone was scrambling to find them some kind of home or employment. It was a slow process but slowly they found new homes and jobs for the displaced people. It had been difficult to keep his regular employees out of the barn, no excuse really making sense as it was the epicentre of the whole farming operation and Richard breathed a sigh of relief when, finally, all had found a place to be.

The Guard that had been scouting for and attacked the Resistance hold had returned to the city, the number’s now soaring into the thousands. Always, they were there, ever watching. No one spoke of the incident, but it was on Richard and Esther’s mind always.

Finally, when he could stand it no longer, nearly a season after the fact, Richard stole out of his home in the dead of night, gingerly making his way out of the boundaries, headed for the caverns.

There was no sight of anyone, but he still found himself jumping with every natural sound about him. The main entrance had been collapsed from within before the final attack, but a side entrance showed clear signs of the breach. It had been this entrance the King’s Guard had used to breach their base. Using this, Richard scuttled in, keeping his lantern close and keeping a vigilante ear out for any sign of movement. What he was doing now would ease his conscience, but that didn’t make it any less dangerous.

The signs of the carnage remained, although strangely the bodies were missing. Richard couldn’t fathom why the Guard had taken the bodies but left that thought aside for later consultation. The very air stank with death and decay, the smoke still sitting on the floor with nowhere to go. Blood splatter lay everywhere, having dripped down walls and spread across floors, crumbling to flakes or staining the surfaces they had lain on. Upturned furniture had been set alight. Each room he filtered through showed signs of struggle, of the massacre brought upon this place. It was a chilling juxtaposition from the bustling nature of the place the last time Richard had set foot here.

He ignored the offices for now, choosing to head to the wide-open cavern that had once been used for training. The bloodstain grew heavy as he approached. The place was completely burnt to nothing, the very dirt blackened and the wooden structures laying in charred pieces that crunched under his feet. It was the back wall Richard focused on now thought, noticing rows of something unfamiliar. As he drew close, he saw they were pieces of broken wood, etched with names and forced into the dirt at one end.

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And beside the very last of the grave markers was the thin wiry body of Kane. He’d somehow survived the severance of his arm. While the limb was not present the blood splatter was, having dried on his clothing in a grotesque image. Richard saw that he must have cauterised the wound himself, the stump blackened and deadened the area around it also featuring smaller burns from where he must have missed the mark.

Kneeling at Kane’s side, Richard caught the very slight rise and fall of his chest and quickly reached forward to shake his shoulder, rougher than he probably should have. Kane’s eyes slowly opened, glassy and unseeing.

“Kane?” He called, hoping for recognition. Kane’s eyes seemed to just slide over him, but he did begin to mutter in a barely legible slurred pattern.

“Had to get them all buried. Couldn’t have them left out. No one is coming back here. Can’t let the sickness get me yet.” It seemed he was seeing a different space then Richard, one where all the bodies had still been fresh.

Kane’s eyes met Richard for a split second. “Thank you.” He whispered out with a deep rattle and was still.

Richard closed his eyes before taking the insignia marking Kane as Leader of the Eastern Resistance. The cool metal depicted an upside-down triangle, what had once been the symbol of the Bearer and had been used since the very beginning to show the role. Legend stated that it had belonged to the last Bearer who left it to the man who would go on to found the Resistance in the East but no one was truly sure where it had come from. All anyone knew was that it had to have been from the time before the King: No one now knew how to make such intricate metal jewellery.

With a world-weary sigh, Richard returned to his feet before copying the careful rows Kane had created and placed him in his own. Usually, a person would be floated down the river, but in this incidence that wasn’t possible. Maybe in time they could exhume and give them their funerary rites at a later date. For now, this would have to do, and Richard prayed it would be enough for them to be able to find their way to the Stream.

He made one last stop, Kane’s office to collect the list kept of all members, thanking the stream the Guard had not found and stolen it. Some who had died still had family in the city and some others were still in hiding, having disobeyed Kane’s orders and fled before the attack. Returning to the graves, he used a bit of coal to mark off the names of those buried there before he stole out the way he had come. He’d been remarkably unhindered by The Guard, and this made him nervous enough to double back and go through the city rather than around it in an attempt to throw off anyone monitoring his progress. There were many places a man could hide at night in a city like Tanut.

Upon his return, Esther had been furious but still demanded a rundown of just what he had found, having guessed correctly just where he had gone. Siobhan too had been furious but in a quieter way, eyes flashing and mouth tight. So, Richard had filled them in, long into the night and into daybreak. Siobhan had been surprised anyone had survived. She herself had been in the compound just that morning, leaving before the actual attack and from what her friends who had been inside had told her it had been a massacre anyone was lucky to make it out of.

“I think infection is what got him in the end,” Richard surmised. “He was likely hoping to wait it out until it was safe enough to leave and the infection spread too fast. When he noticed, he took his own arm off and cauterised it.” Richard shuddered. “I have no idea how he managed it but from his delirious mumbling that’s what I can make of it.”

Esther sent one of the farm hands to find Stoss and Cole and they arrived to find Richard dozing upright in his armchair, gently snoring. He awoke quickly, eyes wild before realising he was safe in his own home. He gave them the abridged version and, after pouring over the list, marking off the people they knew had survived and raising a glass to those they knew were gone, planning a stream side memorial for as soon as possible.

They departed after that, to spread the word and inform the remaining families of their loved one’s deaths. Of the small number of people unaccounted for, they determined to find out if they had escaped another way and were hiding somewhere in the city. With a nod and a clap on the shoulder they left, faces pinched.

Richard turned to his bed, exhausted, and held his wife tightly to himself even in the deepest of sleep.