Dammit! I just wanted things to be simple.
I just wanted closure. I wanted to shut the door on what had come before and move on to something new.
I stood in the darkness of the cave-like room, the stairwell behind me.
Suddenly, the voice was talking again, mid-sentence. “…decisions, and that’s why you shouldn’t be thinking about it like that… wait, you’re there? Of course you’re there! You’re always there! What was I saying? Oh yes… um… boy, that sure was an experience down there, wasn’t it? I sure enjoyed my awareness of everything that just went on! Didn’t you? Let’s play a game, let’s take turns summarizing everything that happened down in that hole!”
I was in no mood. “You couldn’t go down there with me.”
The voice was aghast, outraged. “I couldn’t go down there with you? How could you even suggest… really, when am I not with you? The silliness of even suggesting—”
“You really can’t lie, can you?” I cut in.
The voice drew itself up in a mockery of haughtiness, though anxiety was plain. “I’ve told you I can’t! That’s why you should believe me when I say that… I really think the experience we both had… in the last few minutes… was—”
“Just say you were down there with me, aware.”
“Exactly! That’s what I’m trying to say!”
“Then say it.”
Silence.
I looked at my father’s corpse. Part of me wondered what it would matter to just leave him here. He was dead. He didn’t care anymore. My emotions were raw enough that I struggled to understand why I cared at all in that moment.
The voice said, “You shouldn’t go down there. To places like that.”
“Because you don’t like it when you can’t see what I’m doing?” I replied.
The voice said, “I can’t protect you. Places like that are anomalous. There could be radiation, there could be Entropy—you came so far to start a new life. Stay away from places like that. It’s… it could be dangerous.”
I sighed. “How about we spare this for another time? I have my father’s body to deal with.”
“Fine, well, as long as we’re agreed and swear on our souls and the souls of everyone we care about that we’ll never go back down those steps for the rest of eternity, then I guess I could agree to put a pin in the discussion… now about Daddy… We should go back to Dodge and send a wagon—”
“I’m not leaving him.”
The voice said, “Oh no… you’re not going to pick up that stinky, drippy mess, are you? That’s… so ick.”
I moved through the wreckage of my father’s bodyguards. I found some bedrolls and sleeping bags and carried them to his body. I began removing the relics from him.
The voice said, You can form a pouch in your armor to carry things. Reach down to your thigh, press an item against it, and… well, I guess the best way to describe it is: imagine swallowing it with your skin. That’s the flex you’re going for.
It happened more easily than I expected. On the third try, I felt the connection with the nerves that weren’t there, felt a strange convulsive contraction in the surface of the armor where I held the relic, and in a moment, the armor melted around it, creating a pouch.
I worked quickly. It wasn’t a task I cherished. My mind was far away. This was my father. There was a terrible finality to it. There was a terrible shame in me that I didn’t feel more. I imagined how I would feel if Harold lay here, and I knew the emotions would have been simpler, more appropriate.
Once I had removed the relics, folded his arms across his body, and laid out the blankets, I stopped and looked down at him.
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"I hated him," I said.
The voice replied, Right you were to. This man was a bastard.
"But I’m his son," I said. "I’m not supposed to feel like that. I should..."
The voice sounded surprisingly personal, very sincere, as it said, Hey... I can feel your brain, kiddo. You might not know it, but there’s sadness there. The parts that glow with love are glowing, and the parts that glow with loss and grief—they’re glowing too. The problem is, there are other parts going to 11 as well. You’re not doing anything you’re not supposed to. Sempronius gave you a difficult life. He didn’t treat you the way a father should treat a son either.
I opened my mouth slightly, taken aback by the sudden care in its tone.
The voice continued, You’re doing what you should be doing, and you’re feeling what you should be feeling. Don’t feel bad for thoughts and emotions. It’s actions we’re responsible for. There are no evil thoughts, only evil deeds.
I finally felt wetness at the corner of my eye. But it was one of relief, more than grief. I suddenly felt okay with that.
"What was that?" I asked.
Hmmm? the voice responded.
"There are no evil thoughts, only evil deeds?" I repeated.
Oh? Just a line from a book from a time that died more than a thousand years ago. I always liked it. Come on, what do you say we head back to Dodge with that big oozing sausage roll?
***
I approached the main gates of Dodge by skirting the city on the south side. I didn’t want to go back through the city. I held the bundle of blankets in my arms. I had always been a strong young man. After my sickness passed, I trained hard and was fed well. But the new strength of the suit would take some adjusting to. I carried the body in my arms as I fled the monastery under the pulse of Footfield. The body might as well have been an apple—it cost me nothing to carry it.
I exited Footfield as I rounded the wall to the main gate. My expedition was still gathered there—the small army of Burghsmen, the city knights. Dirk stood in the no man’s land now, with Cassius, Lucius, and Tacita. Chowwick was nowhere to be seen.
I felt my momentum cease as I stepped out of the field, a hundred yards from my convoy. I felt the eyes of the others on me as I carried the blanket. As I approached an empty wagon, still holding the bundle before me, I saw Tacita point a clawed hand to the sky. The energy of BEAM rippled along those razor digits, swelling out from her body.
She fired three times into the sky. The BEAMs were diffuse, not the tight, focused columns of destruction I was used to. I knew what she was doing—sending a signal. I was uneasy thinking about whom she might be signaling. Dirk, standing only ten feet away from her, did not react. He merely turned his head up to watch the display of light.
I placed my father’s body on one of the wagons and returned to the main group.
Cassius said, “Well, I assume that bundle confirms it—this is your city we’re dickering over, then.”
As if realizing how cold his comment was, even between strangers or adversaries, he added, “My condolences for your loss.”
I nodded.
Dirk said, “Yinz knew this was what happened anyway. It can’t cut yinz up too bad. I’m sorry, m’lord.”
I had had enough of this. Before Tacita, as likely to one day try to kill me as to ever be an acquaintance, could add her own commiserations, I asked, “Where’s Lord Chowwick?”
Dirk replied, “He got worried about you and went looking. Skirted around the city to the north.”
My heart hammered at that. Joel was out there! Why I cared exactly was hard to say, but I didn’t want Joel found. I didn’t want Chowwick or Joel to wound or kill one another.
Why didn’t I want Joel—a wanted man, a crazy pest in my life—apprehended?
Tacita said, “We arranged a signal should you return. He should have seen my display.”
Cassius pursed his lips impatiently. “Then we can finally get to our dickering.”
As he spoke, I saw Tacita turn her head. A moment later, I felt it too—the disruption in the fabric of Order and Entropy that signaled an approaching Footfield. I turned my head to follow her gaze.
Chowwick was crossing the prairie, his form distorted by the field as it bent reality around him. I was relieved to see him returning. From that direction, he had not found the monastery and, thus, had not found Joel. I was also happy to have him back—I didn’t like our force split like this. Chowwick added weight that made our group stronger. I didn’t trust Cassius and didn’t dismiss the notion that he might turn his men loose on us to claim whatever treasures were in the town for himself.
Under SIGHT, I could just about make out the motion of Chowwick’s limbs as he bolted across the land.
And under SIGHT, I could also see the forms rising from the long grass before him. He was more than a mile away when the figures erupted from the grass.
I had never seen a Hordesman before, but I had seen drawings. I recognized them—the strange cloaks, the unusually colored lacquer of their plated armor. Their forms were broken by tufts of prairie grass shoved into every crevice, turning their armor into ghillie suits.
I didn’t have time to count how many. I only had time to see a long length of chain stretched between two of them, directly in Chowwick’s path. If I’d had more time, I would have shuddered at the thought of what might happen when Chowwick passed through it under Footfield.
I only had time to shout, “Chowwick! No!”
But it was useless—he was too far away to hear me.