We were eight days from Ryvlernt when mildew was in the cabbage. Tainted, all, char over ruffled leaf. Mine was an unmet gripe. Suppose none other has stomached the sours of desperation. Nightfall, where the breeze is by carrion assailed and naught but bark croons, could teach to the divide. Mercy, Forglair. Mercy, to might. Porhvuud hoarded a reckoning for us all. And the cabbage we dumped to the river. 

Orolm and his damned pest led us on, past frail wheats. Little more than clumps of bleached grass, peeked through by the quite skittish. None begrudged so large a company, yet you could see it in the eyes heaved up from the gutters of the cornrows: Questioning, doubting. They knew naught laid west but the old wood and the long way to it, through grey isolation. They gave us no warnings. They wagered already we were mad. Yet fieldhands with their black nails and bruised knees could not imagine fortunes. They could not covet what they could never reach. I bore a pity for them, who saw things daring and divergent as only ever lunacy. Lunacy was a march from fence to pit, day to night for all your scavenged century. Lunacy was a trust in tales before honest desire. Many eyes did find us, in our meander betwist the backroads of each long forgotten hamlet. Yet it was only the crows that spoke. 

Wheels churning through mud was the hum of passage. I would walk the rear, to keep ready hands at the falls of the carriage. Hours were spent in scrutiny of the filth below. The way the dirt trenched and scarred, like a cadaver to impetuous study. And there would be pools in my steps, holding in them a low and pale sun, a murder in flight, the thorn-crowns of wilted oaks. There was light flashing in the roll of the wagon. Beams, like pillars. Like teeth, there then not. Like gnashing.

Arthryd Irmiter is a bastard, born to a whore. I begrudge her none, for the spendthrift who took her name. My own company, prey to the silver tongue, peddling giggles for longer tales. They water ulcers through to evening. A prospector’s worth is in his constancy. Sphia hung to every word. Beryll, too. Even Drudgefoot could not repel him, and Garl abhors ill-borns. What shield is his camaraderie when comes the cave collapse? I trust him little and his stories less. There is no man achieved who meddles in the old wood, through rock for copper. There is no man of good wealth and wisdom who would risk it in Porvhuud—none but a man gone mad. 

He spoke seldom of the risk westward. Sphia would belittle it, jest of ghouls fireside. Then that dullard Molt, who is for Arthryd a golem, laughs to himself, apart from the rest of us. Wagonside, with his snickering. His strong, dirty snickering; his vast and hairless mauls. There is a thing in the wilds of Arthryd’s will he has witnessed. A thing that broke poor Molt’s mind. Now, he wrestles with horses. And he snickers in the night. Garl, I can tell, loathes it all. His tight eyes find poor Molt through the dark. He wants his throat out. A chapel of sorts, Arthryd once revealed it to be. In the grey wood at the death of the plains and like temptation tickling forbidden streets, dried out and overcome again. It sits, in stone well ruined. A lump of rock, he calls it, though never has he been so far to see. On the morrow we will meet the hamlet of Rabdour. It is the last lighthouse at the furthest shore. Then there is darkness. Then there is sea. 

Riches are west. It is the beggar that fears the deep. 

Rain battered thatch. Morning was without its light. On knees in the mud worked Rabdour’s earnest lot. Suspicion found us before the gate was made, groped our mares, fur unto flesh in search of plague’s patchwork. They did not believe in the health of our coming. Rabdour was measly and knew much shadow that morning, in its slumps and nooks, and therein they eluded us. Orolm and Molt frightened most away, I’d wager. The club, the clamour of fat feet. Though through shutters were flickerings, as if candles were held just below the windowsill. Rabdour watched on quiet breaths, so disparaging that to be seen was to share in our affliction. They were gawkers to the comet, already imagining the blast. I had faith in my very heart that they waited for the land to swallow us. Yet they would lose their fingers clutching at our earnings, when the days were done and they witnessed at last that boon of old courage. Then they would have doors ajar and merry greetings for each of us. And for all those of Rabdour, it would be too late.

Beryll took to the tavern; a sordid underbelly to the attic of a ruffian, who doused his tankards in well-water, I surmise. With him went Sphia, Garl Drudgefoot, and dragged along was Good Barb. Arthryd shared words with Molt and the Cystbug, left the carriage in their care, guarded too by Orolm and the mut, then joined the rest for drink. I do not drink anymore. Unlike the landsipper, my tales are of no joy to rekindle. It is in that that I know Arthryd Irmiter is false to us. You do not recount the alley deed done by shovel nor that grime of an opened belly with mirth, for cheers, for the glitter of a grin. You know it as an aching, but if warring may turn to your amusement, all about you must ponder: what atrocity might your boredom incite? What depth might a blackguard stoop to to lift his fog? They will laugh only in the shallows of Porvhuud. When the world is lightless, they will know true quiet. Mercy, Forglair. Mercy, to might.

I went idle roadside, on the verge of a haunt. The town could house no more than thirty, I wagered, and in counting shops I knew none but the seasonal merchants came here. Much the stock was to treat malady. There was a porch a mother scrubbed, with two sons. Incessant, they scrubbed, as if to blotch out some blemish worked down to the roots. And beside their hut there was a young woman, cradling a towel to her chest. She seemed to be near crying, or just recovered from it. I had thought I’d seen her speaking with the wall. 

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I was in short time hailed, by a stout fellow. His nose drooped over a scowl. “You’re no vendors,” he told me. “You’ve come far, with nothing to trade.” I told him we were prospectors and all of us a company, headed farther. Farther, on to Porvhuud. The words did not suffice for him. He chewed them, choked on some dastard thought, then spat between us. “See Miss Hort,” he told me. “Last house, by the hillock. None other will give you courtesy. You nor your hunters.” I maintained we were not such, but seekers, and at that he shook his head in a manner so belittling I wished to strike at him, yet his words were arrest. Grave, glum arrest. “You’ve come west for a fell craving, man of the company. You are a hunter, or a fool.” Again, he told me to see Miss Hort, then off he was, waddling to some security my visage could not exist in. 

Now I was no indulger in superstition. I had my work and my strength and gambled on nothing more. To the hearsay of crones, my fellows would jeer, spirited. Yet the hollows of the old world have taught me much. I know in every old lie once lurked a truth so wicked ears befouled to it. Then I fetched Orolm and his hound. He was in the midst of chiding the Cystbug when I found him, and that hassling I waved away. A warty, disheveled man is the Cystbug, come along at the behest of Arthryd to tend to sacrament, gladdening the land. I insisted we had no need of such a leprous cur on our tail. Their duties were to read the boons and bothers of the earth, to tend to rituals untrue and by only pagans kept. And very rarely, their duty was to bury the dead. His very meander was doubt. No matter. He would not go bruised on my watch, so Orolm I took with me. 

His dog was without eyes and his club a stiff oak slab. Beside him, Rabdour’s every gripe scattered. A black beard brimmed in sawdust was a sorry last sight for anyone. 

Miss Hort’s home was a cabin, in the lap of a little hill, too wide a berth from all else. No lights shone inside and the rain seemed about to win over the roof’s integrity. A rickety mole amidst the fronds, it was. Easy to find. Wreaths of white flower twirled in its wooden slits. An oily stink took us in, then Orolm’s knock nearly broke the door. When it gaped, I had thought there came a hood with nothing in it. But there were chattering teeth and warted lips. Opened flesh like sideburns along her cheeks, ripped from strain more than snipped. She was brief and hobbled in stature, swaying with premature fret, on the cusp of unsung deliberation. We were one angst of many it seemed, to knock that morning upon her door. 

“Miss Hort?” I guessed. “We were told to see you, for our way west.”

And in she beckoned us, with a wave of resign. Indeed, her barrow was lightless. It was cluttered by more dishes than a banquet demands, some with grimy aftermaths and most untouched by all but dust. There were crafts of wicker about; under the rug and facedown on the shelves, though none were of any known, coherent form. Simple knots and tangles and hangings, and there were too hangings of moss. They dripped. The floorboards were stained in spots and slick under us, but again bent. Wavering below me, I could see too much night between the cracks. In my mind was a cavern and my eyes guessed beneath us it sprawled, patient devourer, but a minute more I was rid of visions. And the room was narrow and quiet. And she waited, Miss Hort did, in a plain wooden seat that gave her away to a corner of tapestries, veiled for betrothal to the spiders and their webs. Burgundy sheets, of gibberish and men upright in the masses. 

“West is not your way,” she croaked.

“I have heard Porvhuud dislikes its visitors.”

“That is not true.” Miss Hort fell to her nails, rubbed them to her flaking lips. “Not true, that.”

“We go west,” said Orolm, too bold. There were many scents for his hound to sniff out and go bothered at, but the mut did not stir. Its empty sockets held to the feet of the crone. “Matters are there. Work, we must do. What waits in the old wood?”

“For you? No, it does not wait. No, it has its doings, its sort to tend. But what eyes find the yard when strangers tromp the garden? The old wood is quiet, ever, but not barren. Not nearly so.”

“Wolves?” I wondered. 

“A century has died since last a wolf did hunt in Porvhuud.” She shivered, wedged blunt paws through her wobbling knee. The skin stretched. I thought I glimpsed red glide out before she whirled unto me again. “How many to your company, eastman?”

“Six more.”

“And the Cystbug,” added Orolm, like he knew I’d forget him. 

“That is many,” said Miss Hort. “Keep near to another, but not in-hand. The trees… they are jealous, leafless. Thrawn coveters of man’s coloured vein. Long ago did I walk, for a mimicry of good venture. To Porvhuud, I gave eleven days. Hear, eastman! Eleven and a morning, till I was rid of its turf. And there did I hear songs of carnal instrument, revelation to my ear, revelation in black! I awoke in muds without rains, a grinding deep. Lonely, until the wind. Treetop I saw them: the critters bitten of their heads. Eleven days, in Porvhuud. Eleven and a morning. Then gone, once and forever.”

“Yet you are all intact,” said Orolm, forward. “To a lady, perhaps the forest is cruel stay. Though we are many, and not unarmed. Be it a bear or the storm, it has only a hide so thick. Only so lasting.” He shook his head and grumbled. “All the valley is owed to man, at the last.”

“Yes, I am whole, eastman. I am. But it was with my mate and sons that I walked Porvhuud. And it has been the decades since that this house has missed their play.”

“I am sorry,” I said, and meant, for the snag of her heartache was horrid but a razor. “Did you get to bury them, at least?”

“It is the dead that are buried, eastman. My Gertrude, my Artur and Henrick, never left the forest.”

Something wrong was in her eyes. I nodded and took leave. “Pray for us, then,” I said.

“Oh,” Miss Hort quivered. “But I wouldn’t dare.”