“So when ya gonna be back, boy?” Like usual, my father’s deep voice was gruff and disapproving as he stared out across the breakfast table at me.
Stubbornly staring back at the large man sitting opposite of me, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was truly the fruit of his loins. Standing over two fell-handles tall, my father had always towered over me with his huge height and massive girth, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me from glaring back at him. “I dunno,” I answered him, making my voice as deep as I could, so I’d sound more manly – at least to myself.
“I’ll probably head west and stay out at the old Conner’s farm,” I lied, trying not to show it with my face. “I heard from Jaxx that the northland geese had returned to the ponds back there, and I might stay for a few days to try and get a few. If all goes well, I’ll be back in a week with enough feathers to restuff my mattress.”
Like all good lies, the second part held some truth to it. I had heard from Jaxx that the geese were back out at the Conner’s place. I just wasn’t planning on hunting them; I was actually planning on going south and heading to Burkshire. I’d never been to the city, and it was about three days walk from Hone, and I wanted to give it a visit. Three days there, a day to look around, and three days back, with no one the wiser. What could possibly go wrong?
“Feathers, ‘ell! If’n ya kill dem geese, bring us ta meat, not ta feathers, boy!” Snorting, my father rose with a lumberous groan from his chair. Grabbing his axe, he turned and kissed my mother, and then ponderously lumbered his way out the door. Thankfully, my father isn’t a very talkative soul.
“You know,” my mother whispered gently, “I’m going to worry about you while you’re out.” Tall and lanky, skin and bones, with no real curves, my mother wasn’t one that most would call a beauty – which was good for them because my father would probably murder them if he heard them say it. For all his faults, the old fool did love her, and that was obvious.
“Don’t worry, ma,” I assured her. “I’ve got enough healing paste for an emergency, I know what not to eat out there, and I’ll be sleeping indoors and out of any weather.”
“You do know that Han is claiming that a storm is coming, right?” My mother asked, worriedly.
“That crazy old bat?” I couldn’t help but snort. “She’s always claiming something outrageous. Says she’s ‘a child of the spirits’. The only spirits she might be a child of is the kind you drink,” I laughed dismissively.
“She’s right sometimes,” mother warned me, frowning slightly as she passed me several wrapped up packages. Even if I couldn’t catch any game, she was going to make certain that I didn’t starve to death.
“Even a broken clock’s right twice a day,” I muttered under my breath to myself. Whether clocks exist in another universe or just in my dreams, I knew there wasn’t any reason to mention them to mother. She wouldn’t understand. Getting up from the table, I hugged mother gently. “I’ll be fine,” I reassured her. “I’ll be careful out there.”
Taking my pack from the table, I slung it and my quiver over my shoulder and headed to where my longbow sat near the door. Grabbing it, I turned and waved lightly, before opening the door and heading outside.
I was careful to make certain to walk westward until I was deep enough into the forest to be out of sight, before turning south and heading towards Burkshire.
Walking through the woods, I couldn’t help but whistle merrily to myself while enjoying my thoughts on this beautiful day. The sun was bright and warm, the wind was slow and gentle, and the smell of flowers drifted hazily all about, causing my eyes to water lightly from mild hay fever.
‘Is it 100 strides to town? 200?’ Frowning slightly, I just couldn’t adjust to the units of measurement in this world. Inches, feet, and miles. Centimeters, meters, and kilometers. The old world – the world of my dreams – had a definitive measure for movement. This world doesn’t. At least, as far as I was aware, it doesn’t have any such standards. Even being raised here all my life, I found the measurements of this world confusing.
Most people I know measure things in relation to their job. My father, and most of the local villagers for instance, measure things by axes, fingers, or hands. The width of a finger was usually the smallest unit of measurement, being close to an inch in size. After that, folks measured things by a hand’s width, and then by a hand’s length – which, of course, was slightly different for each person.
To stop arguments between merchants and people trading, most “official” measurements in our village use “hatchets”, “half-axes”, and “fell-handles”. A “hatchet” refers to the length of a handle in a hatchet – about a foot or so, I’d estimate – while a “fell-handle” is the length of a full axe used to fell the trees. Guessing, I’d put its length at around three foot, or a meter, while a “half-axe” split the difference between the two, and is probably close to about two feet in length.
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After that, measurements get even more vague in this world. A grown man’s step is more than a half-axes’s length, but usually less than a fell-handle’s, and it varies from person to person; but it’s how most people attempt to measure distances for maps and such. One thousand steps make a “stride”, which by my best estimate, would be about a half-mile or close to a kilometer – which led to me ruminating about distance to myself on this beautiful day.
If one accepts that a person walks about three miles in an hour (and don’t even get me started on the inaccuracies of time here), and if one accepts that a standard day’s travel is about ten hours, that’d put the distance between Hone and Burkshire at about ninety miles, or close to 180 strides. That is, of course, entirely adjustable, depending on how close my actual step is to being 1/1000th of a half-mile, which is something I can’t be certain about at all.
And, while lost in my own worthless thoughts, I kept placing one foot in front of the other and slowly marched ever closer to my goal as the sun continued its trek across the sky with me.
My stomach growling alerted mew hen it was a couple hours before dark, so I made a point of keeping my eyes open for a good place to camp for the night. I hadn’t bothered to bring along a tent – it was the warm season after all, so I didn’t need to fear the cold or wind – so I kept a watch out for a decent place suitable for protection and water.
The sky was considerably darker, with the shades of twilight heavily painting the horizon, before I finally found what I was looking for – a small patch of densely grown laurels which surrounded both sides of a small creek. While laughing happily to myself like an idiot – something which I actually tend to do a lot, since there’s usually nobody who travels with me to tell me how much of an idiot I look like while doing so -- I wiggled and squirmed myself along the edges of the branch and into the midst of the thicket.
Pulling my hatchet from the side of my pack, I spent several long minutes and hacked limbs and branches from the right side of the creek, where I pulled them down into the creek in front of me, clearing enough of a spot so I could climb up onto that side of the bank undisturbed. Once back out of the water which I’d muddied wading through it, I took a few moments more to finish clearing enough space so I’d have room to sit and stretch out comfortably in my hidey-hole. It wasn’t the most spacious of places to rest for the night, but the foliage of the think laurel was dense enough that it’d keep the morning dew off me and conceal me from any larger predators which might roam the night this deep in the woods.
Content that I was safe enough for now, I leisurely kicked off my wet boots and wiggled my toes in satisfaction. Undergarments, which included such things as socks, in this world were a luxury afforded to only the wealthy, so I didn’t have to worry about taking those off and sitting them up anywhere to dry as I rummaged around in my pack to see what mother had fixed for me.
A whole loaf of fresh brown bread, half a wheel of cheese, a dozen sausage links, and several small jars of canned fruits were neatly packaged in the bundle mother had fixed for me. Licking my lips, I ripped off a small corner of the bread and using my hunter’s knife, I sliced off a chunk of cheese and one of the sausages, and I put them together to make a half-sandwich.
Taking my time to try and savor it, and not scarf my food down – I was hungry after all, I hadn’t eaten anything at all since breakfast early this morning – I couldn’t help but be a little disappointed at how far away Burkshire was. A whole day’s walking, and I estimated that I’d probably only covered about one fourth of the distance. The only good news is that tomorrow I should be able to reach the road and then make better time for the rest of the difference. At least, that’s what I’m hoping, or else this journey might take me longer than the three days which I’d allotted myself.
Worrying myself even though there was nothing I could do about it, I finished my meal as the sky darkened on into night. Surrounded by pitch blackness, as the laurels blocked out the stars and moons above, I slowly managed to calm myself and let sleep overtake me.
Blanketed in the shadowy protection of the laurels, I slept much longer than intended the next morning. Inwardly cursing myself for already delaying a long journey of uncertain length, I rushed to slate my morning’s thirst at the creek, before relieving my bowels and bladder and then climbing back out of my hides-hole. Taking just a few moments more to put my boots back on after, I quickly sliced some sausage, bread,and cheese, and quickly started on my way again.
As the morning slowly passed, I worked my way out of the thicker forest and back where I could see the sky once more. Overcast and dark, the smell of rain was light in the air, but growing heavier as the morning slowly progressed into evening. Damn my luck! That old bitty might’ve actually been right for once about the rains coming. Well, there was nothing I could do about it now except get wet. I was already too far out to turn back now.
I was guessing it was slightly after noon when two things occurred at about the same time. First, the rain that I’d been smelling all morning finally started to fall as a slow, persistent drizzle; and second, I finally found my way out of the forest and onto the wide stone road that would take me to Burkshire. Turning dawnward, I stubbornly ignored the drizzle and picked up my pace. In the middle of nowhere isn’t the best place to be while the sky keeps darkening and thunder reverberates in the distance, but if I’m the least bit lucky, I might be able to find a barn or way station to hunker down in before dark falls.
After an hour or so of walking, I was thoroughly drenched and miserable, when I spotted several dozen vultures hunkered together in the trees south of the road. At first, I wasn’t going to pay any attention to them, but then my curiosity got these best of me. A single vulture would be drawn to a rabbit, or other small game. As many as half a dozen vultures might flock to the carcass of a dead deer, or other large animal, but there were half a hundred vultures that I could see nestled in the branches of the trees.
“This might be something I can earn a few gold with,” I muttered to myself, as I left the road and worked my way towards the tree line. Various caws and cackles from the foul beasts assaulted my ears as I approached, but none of the birds made any attempt to fly away into the rain.
“Gods be damned!” The odor of overly ripe, rotten flesh, and acidic, sharp bird shit hit my nose in a nauseating wave all at once as the winds shifted direction. Uncontrollably, hot bile steamed up in the back of my throat and I bent over uncontrollably and spewed the remnants of my breakfast from my stomach. Never in either of my two lifetimes worth of memories had I ever imagined such a putrid odor could exist!
Bent double, I gagged and heaved for what seemed like an eternity, completely forgetting about the rain which was now starting to fall earnestly. I forgot completely about being chilled and feeling miserably drenched. For what could only be called an endless moment, all I could do is puke and gag as the stench burnt my nose and made my eyes cry rivers.
“Fuck me.” Burying my face into the damp sleeve of my elbow helped a little, but not enough. Nothing can block the stench of something like that once it’s seared into your nostrils and lungs. “Watch the hell happened here?”
Forcing up my courage, I ignored the blistering wrongness that was still assailing my nostrils, and made myself take one step after another into the southern edge of the forest. The vultures cackled, spat, and shit in my direction, telling me to leave their territory, but I ignored them completely. After about a hundred steps into the forest, I finally saw the source of the stench.
Dead bodies.
At least a dozen of them, and maybe as many as two dozen. The corpses were torn apart from the scavengers, with entrails and flesh strung about to such a degree that I couldn’t be certain where one body stopped and where another started. I couldn’t imagine a scene in hell looking any more disturbing than what was scattered so haphazardly amongst the forest.
Unable to resist my instincts, I turned and fled back to the road as fast as my feet could carry me, before collapsing to my knees in the middle of it. Whether the rain, or my tears, fell heavier, I couldn’t say.