Chapter 49
Sweat poured off both men, their clothes long since soaked through.
Their water skins and canteens were low and by all map accounts, the nearest stream was still several miles away - if the water hadn’t bled out under the unrelenting heat of the sun, baking the landscape.
Smoke filled the air, in taste, smell, and sight as gray haze blotted out anything beyond a few yards. They walked through an endless, charred ruin of a world on the cups of... Something - although neither exhausted, dogged man could put a name to the feeling.
As the day wore on, more and more smoke filtered in from the wildfires ravaging the countryside. Mikel suspected the worst of it was coming from the East where the vast savannahs of The Continent lay. He'd gotten reports the fires were bad, but he hadn't guessed at the now visible extent.
“How many miles do you think we've covered?” Mikel asked, louder than was absolutely needed. The heat pushed in on him, causing pressure and stress to build up with every step he took under the heavy ruck load on his back. The volume at which he spoke worked as a relief valve to vent some of the pent-up energy.
“Nearly fifteen, I'd say,” Helsket said, but more quietly, “If you can keep up, we've many to go before we should stop. This won't be the worst of the heat either. Weather forecast has the temperatures much higher tomorrow and the next day – Some are saying hot enough to cook an egg on a rock. I'd like to get to Kar'Xet before nightfall. We're committed to it now - if we get any closer and stop, we might run into trouble at night.”
Mikel suppressed a groan and looked at Helsket, amazed the older man could push along at the same pace he'd started with.
Helsket was larger than Mikel by at least eighty pounds, and although his gut had grown over the years since he’d seen his father’s retainer, Helsket still stood tall and proud – an intimidating figure in any crowd, and also still an avid outdoorsman.
Mikel wondered if Helsket was using some form of travel Skill of his own to lighten the load across his tremendous frame. Mikel didn't want to admit it, but the years of reading and not doing much traveling or training might not have been the best bet for an adventurer. Whatever Helsket's trick was, he wanted something similar - especially if this was how life would be from here on out.
“Not used to the heat yet – but you'll get there. This isn't as bad as when your pa and I got stuck out on the open plains to the East and we very nearly cooked alive one summer's day. Plate armor and high temperatures don't mix. I felt like a turkey in a can.”
I feel like a turkey in cotton and leather – and I think I'd still be a cooked turkey if I was wearing the leathers Telgil gave me.
His ruck tugged at his shoulders, every pound feeling like a boulder on his shoulders. A deep ache had settled into the area between his shoulder blades and ran the length of his spine from the base of his skull to his tailbone.
Might have packed lighter too.
“Here, this'll help,” Helsket said as he lifted a silver, pint flask to his lips before passing it to Mikel as if sensing the younger man’s discomfort.
Mikel grabbed the silver flask and nearly dropped it as the metal scorched his skin.
He spent the better part of the next minute tossing the flask back and forth until his hands acclimated to the extreme temperature.
“What's in here?” He asked as he held the flask in a loose grip, only the tips of his index finger and thumb able to touch the metal.
“Fire whiskey! Same as we had in the tavern with the cute serving girl. I had her fill it up for me before we stepped out. Not the cheap stuff either.”
“Is that why it's so hot? It’s fire whiskey?”
“Nope, that's the sun's fault.”
Mikel groaned, unable to turn the drink down. He was just starting on his first real quest, and he couldn't NOT drink – even if he feared the pain from the liquid fire about to pour down his throat.
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He unscrewed the cap and through the tiny hole in the top of the flask, could see an almost black liquid sloshing like diabolical lava within. To his eyes, it appeared as if vapors from the contents welled up from the surface and danced into the air in a mad waltz before vanishing in the heat-spawned breeze, more furnace pump than air.
He grimaced as he drank, but got the stuff down.
He handed the flask back to Helsket and winced as the fiery pain surged back up his throat, bile carrying the burning drink.
“You’ll get used to it, just like the heat,” Helsket said as he took a nonchalant swig from the flask before stoppering it and tucking it once more into his belt.
Mikel shifted under his pack. He was no stranger to walking long distances with weight on his shoulders, (although not this much!) but something about this seemed… Different. Heavier. More real.
He couldn’t make heads or tails of the feeling yet and so walked along for another hour, sweating and panting as the sun climbed through the sky until it sat directly overhead and obliterated any wisps of shadows that had escaped earlier destruction. The message from above was plain - There was no escape. There was no respite. You will die here.
Helsket broke the silence, and snapped Mikel out of his dark mood for a moment, “So why now? Why do this now of all times? You have a lot to gain if your father dies - and you’ve even acknowledged it might be better if he passed. It would leave you with an estate, wealth, and a title. There’s much you could do with that. People would kill for the chance you have waiting for you at home. Maybe even a wife of good standing if you're lucky.”
Emotions battled within Mikel and after a pause, when Helsket sensed something amiss, he continued his line of questioning, “There’s more to this, then?”
Mikel nodded, his throat, already dry, chapped, and tight, had pulled closed and he had trouble breathing the thick, hot air.
His eyes burned, but not from the heat or smoke.
“Dad… didn’t leave things well before he began to succumb to The Rot. In the months leading up to when he was unable to move, he bought and tried many different remedies. Remedies that were supposed to help, if not outright cure The Rot. He entertained doctors, mages, soothsayers, and the like for the better part of two years before he finally came to the realization there wasn’t a cure any man could give him. There was only death and he was to meet death either by his sword or by time’s hands as The Rot continued to eat into him. By the time he would have killed himself, he was too weak and his mind too watery to follow through with the deed. He couldn’t hold a knife, let alone kill himself with one. I think he would have asked me if he’d been able to.”
Helsket swore and wiped sweat from his forehead, “Damn fool old man. If he hadn’t let us go we could have done something. Something to help him - or at least keep the charlatans away. This? This is dishonor at its finest. Bah,” he spat to the side and after a moment looked back to Mikel who had fallen behind a step.
“And it gets worse. He racked up so much debt that… Well, even if we somehow manage to cure him, the debtors will be thick as flies on a carcass. They’ll just view his ill health as a good enough excuse to come knocking. They’ve stayed away out of some thin, professional courtesy, waiting for the dead to die and all, but I doubt they’ll wait for the proper year’s mourning before they come a’calling. I think, as soon as Dad’s in the ground, they’ll swoop in and our estate won’t be our estate anymore.”
Another long silence passed between the two as huge, black birds climbed into the sky and circled above them. The earth sizzled as they walked, and even the rocks appeared to beg for respite from the barrage of pure fire falling from above.
“And the treasury doesn’t have enough in it to cover enough of the debts to keep the money hangers away?”
“Not in the slightest. What is there isn’t of much use to anyone but a warrior household, and there are few enough of us left that the weapons and armor inside amount to so much soon-to-be rusted slag. We could try to auction off the few pieces of gold we have left, but, like the rest of our house, to the general public at least, it's tainted with The Rot and no good to keep around.”
“You’re father was a brave man - but stupid. He shouldn’t have sent me out, at least. He knew I would have stood by his side until the gates of Hel burned in front of us.”
“And you get the chance to do that with me instead,” Mikel said with a laugh, “I’d be careful what you swear from here on out. You never know what’ll come true and what’ll just be so much dust in this damnable heat.”
“One thing at a time, I suppose,” Helsket said with a sigh, “If this Panacea is real, as you believe it is, then we might find more riches than just it with HelGate. If not… we might just find death and our problems’ll be solved either way.”
Mikel laughed at the gallows humor, “That reminds me of Dad, before The Rot that is. I guess… you all joked like that quite a bit.”
“You know what living with death can do to a man, you’ve done well with your pa, but being a warrior on the road, selling your sword to the highest bidder and laying yourself down to bed at night, trying to battle the demons of dead men come to collect their dues… Well. You said it - Humor helps. A balm, if not a cure.”
Mikel nodded, and wiped his face, leaving streaked, muddy fingerprints down his cheek but not noticing the marks. “Do you think the others will come to help us? I'm just a kid… and a kid that hasn’t done much in his life. You all have faced down literal demons and lived to tell the tale.”
“But not without our scars,” Helsket traced a thick finger down his cheek, letting the knobby scar adorning his face push back against the pressure he exerted on it.
“That is from an actual demon, then? I've heard the stories... But you know how stories go.” Mikel tipped his head back in appreciation. He wanted to hear the story but knew such things were often hard to pry from old veterans - even tale-tellers like Helsket.
Whether it was the heat, the timing, or the whiskey, today of all days, Helsket didn’t hesitate to tell the story of how he and Lord Raithson, with the rest of their band of retainers, had tracked, ensnared, and finally sent a demon back to the underworld after it had assaulted town after town after town, reaping people as easily as wheat - until it had come to Raithson Manor itself to kill, only to be rebuffed. This demon would go to ground in a cave miles from the estate, and there it waited until Lord Raithson, Helsket, Sylix, and Calcifer had found it and killed it - but not without cost. The battle had signalled the end of Erik Raithson's pinnacle of might, and his descent into The Rot.
The battle that ensued was not just any battle - the demon they fought, not just any demon.
The demon they tracked, and cornered was a legend in its own right, rivaling the whole of House Raithson. It was a demon with a body count higher than most kingdoms - it was a monster that had stalked the dark corners of history since men had taken pen to paper. It was a monster thought dead but had managed to come back to stalk Mikle as if in revenge for the acts of his father.
No, this wasn't just any minor demon or conceptual, the story Helsket told was of the Time Demon and how Erik Raithson had killed it and lost the symbol of his house.