Four days had passed since they had left the mines, during which time Alistar had committed hundreds of plants, animals and insects to memory. Not only that, but his uncle had taught him how to fish.
Their paltry rations had hardly lasted into the third day, so that afternoon they’d returned to the river to try their hands at catching fish. His uncle had snapped a suitable branch from a tree as if it were the spindly limb of a dead sapling, and made sure that the angle left its tip jagged. Somehow, the crude spear had wound up in Alistar’s hands and he was asked to attempt to stick a fish with its tip. To his surprise, he’d missed completely, and the passing fish had fled in the blink of an eye. He had been sure of his aim but had missed by a large margin.
His uncle had laughed at his perplexity, and then speared a fish on his first try. He went on to explain how the location of the fish was slightly off from where it appeared to be. This seemed to happen when things underwater were observed from the outside. When asked why, Raidon admitted that he didn’t know the reason, and that it was just the way that things were. After much trial and error, a patient Alistar finally managed to catch his own fish, a foot-sized critter that he’d hefted up into the air with a yell of triumph.
Rather than eat the spoils, they had set off down the river until the trees encroached up to the edge and there was no longer any room to walk along its side. They’d stopped there for lunch, and eaten the fish raw out of fear that the smoke of a fire might draw unwanted attention. Alistar hadn’t cared much for the taste, or the bones that constantly troubled him, but he’d helped himself to every last morsel of his catch.
That night, they took their chances sleeping on the trail, since the slope along the riverbank had become too steep. Thankfully, nature left them alone that night.
Although the fish had been filling, Alistar had woken up to a grumbling belly and abdominal pains. They had resumed their harrowing journey as soon as they were awoken by the sun’s first rays. Not long after they had set off, he and his uncle stripped a large bush that they’d stumbled upon of nearly all its fruit, which filled their ration bag almost to the point of overflowing. Alistar had almost eaten red berries from another bush nearby, but was stopped by his uncle and told that those berries, and many others besides, were poisonous, and could do anything from upsetting his stomach for an afternoon, to seeing him dead on the forest floor with a foaming mouth.
Currently, it was well into the afternoon of the fourth day since they had left the mines. The sun was directly above them, small beams of light piercing into the heavy shade of the forest through gaps in the foliage above.
“What will we do once we get to Malford?” Alistar asked, as he was helped over a fallen tree.
“We hope that people are still willing to help an old friend,” said Raidon, swatting at a fly. “If not, we find work and save up until we can afford to join a merchant caravan. No matter how many years have passed, there’ll always be plenty of people traversing the Winding Road. Ah, it’s the only road that connects both sides of the mountain range.”
“Bigger than the one leading to the mines?”
“Yes, and much more dangerous. That’s why we’d need to join one of the caravans, which hire escorts to protect them from beasts and bandits.”
“Bandits?”
“Wild animals aren’t the only things to watch out for, Alistar.” Raidon wore an expression that Alistar saw often, one that made an appearance whenever he struggled to explain a delicate topic. “Humans are animals too, Alie, the most dangerous ones in this world. Creatures in the wild attack based on their instincts and their hunger. People, on the other hand, deliberately make the decision to hurt each other. Outside of the mines, people attack and kill others simply for their money or their possessions, even their bodies. Bandits are such people.”
He remembered how the guards that attacked him had turned on one another the moment that they noticed his precious crystal.
“They attack travellers and take what they can,” his uncle went on, “the fates of their victims be damned.”
Alistar was quiet for a while. “It seems there are a lot of bad people in this world.” A bone-ridden pit passed through his thoughts, whispers of its evident purpose tearing at his conscience. No, he’d promised his uncle that he wouldn’t think of it. “Why do some people choose to be bad, rather than just being kind?”
Raidon sighed. “A thought that is, and always has been a mystery to me. It must be in our nature. Like I said, we’re also animals.”
Alistar scratched at his head. If there were as many people in this world as his parents had described, then they couldn’t all be bad. His mother, for instance, would never hurt anybody, or treat them unfairly.
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Seeing Alistar’s troubled expression, his uncle’s softened. “Just as there are those with dark intentions, there’re many kind-hearted people out there as well. These—”
His uncle stopped in his tracks, alert and completely still. Before Alistar could ask what was wrong, he was shoved backward. Raidon had pushed him out of the path of a sharpened tree branch. The rough projectile had sailed through the space where he’d just been standing, a flash of barky beige that disappeared beyond the trail in the blink of an eye.
Just as Alistar hit the ground, two men leapt forth from a pair of parallel thickets, each wielding a sharpened shiv.
“Uncle!”
Raidon was subject to a pincer attack from either side, dull knives lashing out with violent enthusiasm. Narrowly avoiding a slash from the first assailant, he twisted his huge frame with such grace that Alistar couldn’t believe the scene that was unfolding before him. He avoided a strong thrust from the second man, grabbed his attacker’s outstretched arm and took advantage of his momentum to direct the knife into the first man’s chest.
Still holding onto the arm, he twisted it around with a resounding snap, and its owner fell with a cry that was silenced by a skillful snap of the neck. Before Raidon could rise to his full height, however, a third man appeared behind him and pressed the recently sharpened edge of an old knife against his neck, drawing a thin line of blood.
“Run, Alistar!” his uncle hissed through gritted teeth, his muscular body heaving from the sudden action. The look in his eyes was wild. “Go!”
Alistar, who was shocked into stillness from the sudden brutality, was unable to respond.
“You killed them in an instant. I’d expect nothing less from you.” The man’s voice held no remorse for his fallen comrades. On the contrary, it was filled with eager delight, like the eyes of a man on the edge of starvation when presented with a steaming plate of roasted meat. “I’d never have guessed we’d find ourselves on this trail again, not together, at least.”
“Bertrand,” growled Raidon.
“What?” said the big man. “Could it be that you’re not pleased to see me? Is that any way to address a friend?”
“We’re no longer friends.”
“And whose fault is that?”
W—why is he here?
Bertrand Loran, one of the former slaves that had recently been released from Crystellum. This was the man that had always pestered Alistar’s family, and the one that had harassed him for his entire life.
Bertrand was just as big as his uncle, with muscles just as developed. His pale, brown eyes gleamed with malice, his mouth worked into a devilish smile that warped his scarred face into something out of a nightmare. He’d recently shaved away the longstanding growth of his beard, the now barren skin revealing a handful of other scars that had always been hidden under the rugged hair.
The men at Raidon’s feet had also been released alongside Bertrand. Where’s the other one? Alistar’s eyes darted around.
“Well, if it isn’t everybody’s favourite boy!” Bertrand looked over Raidon’s shoulder while keeping a hard-gripped handle on the knife. “Ah, if you’re looking for Calen, then don’t bother. He didn’t care for old Raidon too much, but something about murdering Rodei’s whelp didn’t sit well with him, so he had to leave.”
“Bertrand,” Raidon hissed. “Why!”
“You know why!” Bertrand’s voice became aggressive, almost feral. “You know damn well. It’s all your brother’s fault. Everything that happened was because of him! We were friends, Raidon. Friends! I trusted you, we all did. And look where it got us.”
“Do you think we wanted this? Do you think we haven’t suffered as well, after all these years?”
“If Rodei hadn’t opposed Rexus, if you hadn’t convinced me to stand with you… Hanna, the girls—my family wouldn’t have been lost to the flames. I wouldn’t have had to come home to that nightmare, to be sent to Crystellum the very next day!” His voice shook as if he were on the brink of forgetting human speech, his face darkening as he relived some horrible memory. Glaring at his uncle, he went on, “You’re lucky they didn’t trust me enough to take off this damned limiter.”
“I, too, lost the woman I loved!” Raidon’s face was a picture of guilt. “I know what they did, Bertrand. I share the same hatred, the same pain!”
Alistar had never heard his uncle’s voice break in such a way, not even when he had cried on the night that he learned that their family was destined to dissolve. Just now, it had faltered like a sick animal on its last leg.
“The same pain? You dare?” roared Bertrand. “Your foolish family cost me mine! I lost my family, my county, my honour—everything! I was degraded to a mere slave, doomed to waste away in the same hellhole that I sent so many criminals to in the past, all of which would love to see me dead. And if that wasn’t enough, I had to suffer alongside the filth that brought such misfortune upon me!”
“You had a choice, and you made it. Taking your frustrations out on us isn’t going to change anything, and I doubt it’ll ease your pain. If you’re even half of the man I once knew, there’ll be no coming back after this.”
“Day in and day out, I was worked to the bone, and every day I watched Rodei’s precious little boy pass the time with a smile on his face. Everything that his father did, and the kid still got to run around and play with his friend, to live a carefree life.” He let out an unsettling laugh, one that betrayed that his mind was a broken one. “After my little girls, my wife, even my maids, were butchered and burned within their own home. Rodei, the cause of it all, was granted the mercy of having his family spared? He alone?” Bertrand was panting by the time he finished speaking, his eyes wet with emotion.
“You know what type of man Rexus is! You know what would have happened—what probably has happened since we’ve been forced to live underground.”
“And what of it? Despite his character, Rexus didn’t have it in him to kill any more of his brothers. You two…your lives were never in danger from the start!”
Raidon grimaced. “If we didn’t take action, then who knows—”
“If we didn’t take action, then my family would still be here! My sister—your bride, would still be alive!”
Raidon bit back his next response and dipped his head slightly. He spoke up after a moment. “Bertrand, this isn’t what we wanted. We were fighting for a just cause, and we lost. That’s it. If you have hate for anyone, it should be for Rexus.”