CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
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Urman Gant
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27th of Decepter, 935 PC
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There was just enough moonlight to see he wasn’t making much progress but that wouldn’t stop him. If a decade’s worth of pricks and bastards wasn’t enough to stop him from searching for Harlow, digging a hole in the cold, hard ground sure wouldn’t defeat him. Nothing could stop him when something meant enough to him and making sure Kathar didn’t have to dig his own son’s grave meant plenty enough.
Could have just thrown the boy over the cliff like Igan and the big gal, would have been easier, a whole lot easier, but he didn’t know exactly how getting to the road home worked and he’d be damned if he was going to make that little boy walk through a monster’s lair to get to the golden gates. Could have dug the grave at the bottom of the hill too, where the ground was softer, but he figured doing it up here put the boy closer to The Creator. Anything to get the boy home safely. Didn’t matter what pain it caused Urman.
He shoved the jagged end of his broken spear into the hard ground. Not much happened so he shoved again. Harder. Nothing much. “Dammit!” He slammed the fucking thing into the ground again and growled at the lack of dirt that came loose. “Dammit!” He tossed the spear aside and went back to scraping and digging with his fingers again. He’d dig this grave if it was the last thing he ever did. Why? Because Kathar would dig Urman’s someday and that’s not something he was willing to take for granted.
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He crouched beside Tessille’s body and put a hand on his head to scratch an itch that wasn’t there. Like you do when you can’t understand what you're looking at. He figured she might be doing the same thing outside the golden gates since she’d never seen him coming. In her defense, Urman hadn’t either, didn’t even know the dagger was in his hand until after she was spitting up blood. But seeing Kathar crying like that had put the devil in him and whenever that happened he got to killing before his head could sort things out. All he knew was that Tessille had said the Hounds had been heading north and yet there they were killing a boy with five years to his name. Might not have been her fault but reasoning was about as simple as writing when Urman got to feeling like a devil. Maybe had she been a few steps farther away he could have stopped himself. But she’d gone and got close to him when he wasn’t himself and… well… wrong place at the wrong time.
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“I’m sorry,” he said to Tessile. Not that it did her any good but it felt like something you say to someone you killed after cooler heads have prevailed. “I was hoping to have someone out there that didn’t hate me but if I had to reckon it ain’t fair to ask you not to. Not now.”
She didn’t say anything back, they never did, so he picked her up and put her over his shoulder before starting the trek to the cliffside. He hadn’t planned on tossing her over, he’d planned on digging her a grave but it took three hours and ten bloody fingers to get Kolton’s done and didn’t have enough in him for this woman he barely knew. Like her or not.
When he reached the cliff he stood Tessile up in front of him, all four and half feet of her, and stared at her closed eyes. No words jumped out at him so he pushed her gently, no need to be rude, and watched her twist and fall until she hit the water face first. Didn’t take long for the Jazak to swallow her up like the heartless beast it was. It never did.
Once he was alone he took a minute to stare at the light of the moon reflecting off the black water. There was a time when he was a boy that he wouldn’t step outside with the wind howling and the trees swaying like ghosts. That was when he thought the only thing that could roam around on nights like this were monsters.
Turns out he was right.
He spit over the edge of the cliff and headed off to find the westerner.