Ch 14: TESTING LIMITS

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Fionnobhar asked, sounding baffled. “I don’t have magic. This is probably just your fever coming back.” He slipped his sword out another inch. “If you’re going to turn into a bloodghast, you should do it now.”

“I don’t have a fever,” Marten snapped. He felt wretched, but distinctly unfeverish. “This is about you, somehow. Like you’ve tied me to you.”

“Or,” Fionnobhar suggested, “you’ve cracked from the stress. If you’ve changed your mind and want to come with me after all, just say so. Otherwise, magic or not, why would I want to attach myself to somebody who wants nothing to do with me? I’ve got better things to do and better people to meet. Like, yeah, the company would’ve been nice, but not if you’re going to be hissing and scratching at me the whole time.” He shrugged. “I’d rather just try my luck with someone more personable in the next town.”

Marten took a deep breath, shut his eyes, and didn’t open them until he had turned around and taken a step back towards the farmhouse. He walked right up to it, his steps and breathing steady and measured, without any adverse reaction. He sensed, instinctually more than anything, that Fionnobhar was still standing in the road exactly where Marten had left him, watching him quizzically.

Maybe he was losing his mind, as the knight suggested. Perhaps the fever had fried some integral pathway in his brain, the collapse of which was speeding him towards a nervous breakdown. Who could say.

Rather than walk through the door, Marten stepped neatly to one side and walked around the house’s exterior. He turned around the back corner where the walls interrupted Fionnobhar’s line of vision between them, and anxiety clubbed him over the head and sent him staggering. Gritting his teeth against the surge of irrational panic, Marten tried to keep walking. But, as before, he didn’t make it far before some greater force commandeered his body to put him back in orbit around the knight. Using the house’s wall as a crutch, his body dragged him back around the side, winning the fight for control, until he laid eyes on the knight again.

Fionnobhar was where Marten had left him, standing in the road with his head tipped ever so slightly to one side, like he was trying to puzzle out what the hell Marten was doing, and why he was being blamed for it. Marten very much wanted the answers to those same questions, but, as the dreadful panic eased once more, he realized that he actually believed Fionnobhar when he said he had nothing to do with it. Marten didn’t know anything about magic or curses, but he’d seen no sign of either in Fionnobhar, despite their hours together.

They had, however, just met a witch.

“She said I had to go with you to guide your path and act as your conscience,” Marten recalled. “And now I can’t leave. It physically hurts to put distance between us. Fionnobhar, how do you break a witch’s curse?”

“By killing her,” Fionnobhar replied immediately.

“She’s already dead. Could killing her have activated the curse in the first place?”

“Maybe?” Fionnobhar offered. “I’ve never heard of a curse like that, but witches are fucking weird, man. Anything’s possible. I can go set her body on fire and see if that breaks it. Or, maybe it’ll wear off on its own after she’s been dead long enough. She can’t have been that powerful, or she wouldn’t have let me kill her so easily.”

“Don’t burn her. I don't want to somehow make this worse.”

“Right, because staying in my company is such an ordeal.”

“Against my will,” Marten began heatedly, before taking a calming breath and walking back to the road to join the knight. He didn’t feel any calmer, but at least his voice came out even. “I’m sorry for assuming this was your doing. What will you do now?”

Fionnobhar brightened at the question. “Now, I’m heading west to that Lord Renmore guy’s place, like the witch suggested. I’ll kill whatever I come across along the way, and then, depending on the nature of that ‘great shadow’ she mentioned, I’ll either kill him, or see how he feels about paying me to solve the problem. Whatever his problem turns out to be.”

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“You’re not at all concerned about your own role in the witch’s curse.”

“Not really? It seems like it’s only affecting you, so far. Nothing happens to me when you leave my sight, and I’ve got a quest waiting, so. It sucks that you have to tag along with a ‘villainous knave,’ but that’s not my fault, and I'm not really sure it’s even my problem. I’ll totally stop any witches we come across to see if they can fix you, but otherwise, I’ve got my own stuff to do.”

Marten bit his tongue to keep from asking whether Fionnobhar was inclined to take the witch’s warning about his quest more seriously, in light of the curse. If she had the power to lay such a curse, she certainly had the power of true sight. But he doubted it changed anything for the knight, and he would rather keep his head attached to his body.

Instead, he gave a curt nod. “Well then, don’t let me slow you down.”

It came out more acerbic than he intended, but Fionnobhar took no issue with his tone, turning back onto the road and setting a jaunty pace that would take them west.

Marten resigned himself to it, at least for a little while. He had a better chance of coming across a witch who could undo his curse if he was travelling with Fionnobhar as opposed to sitting still, not that he had that option. He only needed to stay alive long enough to make it happen.

On the road, walking a few paces behind the knight, Marten tested the curse’s limits. The distance between them didn’t seem to matter, as long as they were in sight of each other. If Fionnobhar was walking with his back to Marten and Marten shut his eyes, nothing happened, which at least gave Marten some reassurance that sleeping wouldn’t be a problem. If the path was straight and flat, Marten could fall back entire field-lengths without trouble, as long as Fionnobhar remained a visible speck in the distance. But if he passed through a dense copse of trees that blocked him from Marten’s view, even if they were within a few yards of each other, that awful anxiety rose again until Marten hurried to catch up.

The knight, meanwhile, had picked up right where they left off, talking about everything and nothing, not seeming to care whether Marten responded. When Marten was paying attention, he noted that Fionnobhar never talked about anything of substance. He wasn’t simply making small talk about the weather—his tirades were often passionate, and full of twists and turns—but they never offered Marten so much as a glimpse into Fionnobhar’s history. Marten learned a great deal about the food and drink he liked, his opinions on various weapons, and the many towns he had visited, but absolutely nothing of his past, to the point where Marten had to assume that Fionnobhar was intentionally avoiding such personal topics.

There were many reasons a man might avoid talking about his past. From what Marten had seen of Fionnobhar thus far, he assumed all his reasons were nefarious, and that he was better off not asking.

By the time dusk fell all the way into night, the road west from Wickshaw had taken them to the edge of Whicken Wood, where cultivated farmland gave way to shrubs and bushes loaded with berries, which in turn gave way to a wall of tall, dark trees whose bright splashes of autumn foliage amid the green did nothing to illuminate the darkness.

“We’ll make camp here,” Fionnobhar announced, to Marten’s relief, though he doubted his opinion would count for anything if he objected. He’d been sticking closer to Fionnobhar as it got darker, nervous that the curse might interpret his poor night vision as Fionnobhar being out of sight.

“Good thing I don’t have to go hunting tonight,” Fionnobhar said conversationally as he warmed a hunk of leftover mutton over the little fire he’d kindled.

They had set up camp to the side of the road in a patch of field where the bushes had been cleared back, presumably by past travellers. A few yards to the west, the first trees cropped up, slender saplings and stubby firs. They weren’t in the woods proper, but right on the edge of it. The birds had gone to nest, leaving the only sounds the rustling of a cool breeze through dried leaves, and the occasional snap of a twig from somewhere deep out of sight, faint enough that Marten couldn’t be sure it wasn’t his tired imagination. The fire crackled, shooting up sparks as the mutton fat dripped onto the burning branches. Marten had draped his laundry over a few nearby bushes, hoping his clothes would dry by the fire overnight. The farmer’s clothes were tolerable, but short enough in the arms and legs to pinch after a few hours of walking in them.

“I’d hate to try hunting with you shadowing me,” Fionnobhar continued. “You’d scare all the prey away. It’s too dark for it, anyway. Hey, are you going to be able to fall asleep with that curse, or do you have to stay awake all night to watch me?”

“I don’t think even the curse is strong enough to keep me awake tonight. I’ve never been so tired in my life.”

“Well, if you can close your eyes, I’ll take first watch until midnight,” Fionnobhar offered, turning the mutton on the spit. “Second watch sucks.”

“Watch for what?” The area wasn’t known for bandits, and the fire, small as it was, should deter any wildlife from approaching.

“For anything,” Fionnobhar replied, in a tone like he was rolling his eyes behind his visor.

Marten still hadn’t seen the man’s face. When he had first agreed to accompany the knight on a brief adventure, Fionnobhar’s privacy had been a minor eccentricity. Now that Marten was shackled to him for who knew how long, the secrecy rankled.

But he didn’t want to broach the matter. Fionnobhar was too volatile.

When Marten opened his mouth to confirm that yes, he could close his eyes, and yes, he’d like to sleep as soon as possible, a branch snapped from behind the treeline like a warning. It echoed loudly through the night, followed by a sudden rush of movement against the undergrowth.