Chapter VI - Chrome Skies

Eyes hid back between shutters. Hands held knives behind doors. In their measly slacks of brick and lumber, the commonfolk truly believed they were safer than out in the street. How would they fare, Kellid wondered, after his work was done? Would men and women thank him for his cuts earned in their service, or rain him with petals for the sights he suffered in the name of their faith, or would they, like so many other downtrodden swine, relish the time his back at last turned to them?

And, above it all, Kellid wondered if he could possibly deserve it.

Eritle was a humble sprawl of a township. It found itself atop a jagged hill that crowned an otherwise barren stretch of country, and to its rocks the many homes and holes of its people were etched like crooked carvings out from the stone. Their great mound was broad, cliffed wickedly, and erected atop a labyrinthe of crying rock. Dilapidated towers of grey and boarded shacks hobbled across the climb. What moved in Eritle did so in rags and with a shamble, through puddles of cold. What light flickered in the town was coveted dearly and never far from its owner’s chest, as if a flame so meagre could ever dispel the thunderclouds.

To the hill’s eastern edge all height plummeted, for there hulked a rift that could swallow a city and some, nestled over Eritle’s sharpest ledge and down at the rock’s base, then lower still, for the world caved in before it. It poised much like a cavern, open to the sky as if giants peeled off its roof. The great, gaping pit was a sea before Eritle’s perch, and it was known as Argolan: a demented swamp of cypress and mud. Out from its depths crawled Scourgers and down from Eritle came their killers in an awful game of cat and mouse and the demon that grew in the heart of each day’s victor. Those so bold and high on the hunt’s taste ventured down into that wretched below to strike at the chief of Eritle’s plights, but only the mightiest emerged from it again, with scars to prove their folly.

From his terrace between a brothel’s backdoor and death’s mighty drop, Kellid beheld the wood; yawning with a hunger so dark the sun could not breach its treeline. It was a miserable trench, dragging beastfoes to Eritle in swarms and corrupting the very air with its underearth fumes. The propensity of the world beneath’s ill breaths brought a near constant rain, but in that moment Kellid was both shocked and relieved to see silent skies.

He--like every furrfiend left too long to wander the high winds--was no coward, certainly no turntail before thunder’s boom, but from each porch and windowsill of Eritle swung lanterns, brimmed by burning cabalder. A potent incense, it granted them their light at dusk and fogged their every street, while in that mist birthed swirled a toxin that drove beast snouts wild. It proved a poor shield against greater terrors, but for its stench they could sleep a sheet safer at night. Yet when clouds collected and rain fell in pellets down upon the cabalder smoke as always it did, its dusts wetted, yellowed, expanding and stuffing the air about Eritle with a sweet chrome glow. Even now, that faded taint lingered, as if all could expect a storm surging out from the yellow shrouding them.

Looking high, Kellid watched cages sway in the wind, hung by iron chains, holding decrepit scum. They were starved, with needle-like arms probing barely beyond the rust of their bars. Their groans were loonish, but, oddly enough, softened the quiet of night.

Four nights prior, Kellid had arrived in Eritle, alongside a host of other beastfoes loyal to the Clergy of Galehaven. With the grim ensemble came soldiers, too, adorned in their blue and gold and all that miserable steel that would slay them were they ever to challenge a Scourger within it. It was only three nights prior that the first of the cages went up. Zealots, they called them, and in hearing their howls Kellid could not presume otherwise.

“Miserable place to hop,” he jibed, producing then an oak pipe. With two pinched fingers he jammed its bowl full of hamroot, then snapped those fingers together. His gauntlets, while incredibly thin, were tipped in erovite, and the friction from that chlorate fiber spat a spark into the bowl. The hamroot--a grassy flower--ambered at the surface, smoldered when his breath sucked flame down through the pipe’s lip. He lowered its gleam from his jaw and breathed a gust of sulfur over the ledge. “But we make do,” said Kellid, strangling a cough.

The evening sky, what seemed an eternity from that sodden rock, was near violet. A great mass of smothered light sank red towards its horizon. The stain of the clouds glossed across the sun made for a magenta flare, brushing the earth in its cool downward glimmer. The clouds smuggled that violet near, the winds lashed it white. The sky was scarred, but its wounds gorged to become a thing of beauty, like cosmic slots splitting the atmosphere.

Kellid pulled deeper, until his lungs drowned with smoke. He curved forward suddenly, spitting off the summit and hacking out a trail of ash. Patting his chest, he breathed slow, spewing hurt breaths until laughter fell against him from above.

Whipping back nervously, he searched out his mocker, only to find himself another zealot; trapped in a low-hanging cage and, to his estimation, a purebred lunatic servile only to their gaol’s sway. Such a notion faded when he peered closer however, and saw crumpled within the iron cage was a skinny, shaved-headed woman. She wore only tattered rags and through them hugged tight ribs, but in her shoulders was a certain firmness, then in her eyes beamed a firm certainty. Her mouth was drawn to a small-lipped smirk, through which peaked clean teeth.

“You need help with that?” she guessed, her voice a doughy croak.

Kellid observed her a moment. Her stomach had shrunk in recent days. Her gaze fell feral as mud set itself deep upon her body and shade cluttered under her eyes. Blood and grime filed her nails, time left them sharp. She was marred with earth, as if dragged--bruised and bony, as if beaten, but still within her was a mind sound enough to settle the sanity that would otherwise lead her stance to a lunge, and a capability to see its whims through. Kellid turned away from her, dumped the pipe of its contents then began to fill it again.

“What’d they hang you for?” he asked. “Not stealing hamroot, I’d hope.”

“You think me a petty thief?” she answered. “What makes you sure I’m not some raider warlord? Could be I’m the same who turned Arrenfaeld to smoke.”

He glared her down a second time, her tone’s moxie an ear’s cinder. Neither disturbed nor barbarous, she quickly became an anomaly to him. Kellid gawked her way, amused by envisioning such a modest frame as a vanguard for some marauder hive.

“Gonna scare me into letting you out?” he toyed, as a flame snapped to his pipe.

Kellid heard her scutter against the bars. The old iron no doubt raked her shins--barren as they were--but he was sure she was nothing so supple to face a scuff deterred. The prisoner’s lips came to the verge of her gaol, speaking strikingly, as if her line had bubbled low.

“Who said I want out?” she asked. “Last I checked, that pipe’s thinner than these bars.”

Made merry, Kellid chuckled, though hid her from his grin. He took a puff, whisked the smoke sidelong through a part jaw, then nodded to her captivity to lead her gaze apart from his mirth.

“Eh, what joy is a hop if you’ve no ale to wash it away?” he wondered, taking her in. “It’d feel unkind to get you jittered lest I fetched fruit and bread with it, at least.” He puffed again, feeling the hunger he warned of. “Or mayhaps m’lady prefers cheese?” Kellid jested.

“Gin,” she said simply, dispensed of wit, but with a brighter smile. “To be candid.”

“Are we candid, now?” he asked, force throwing smoke from his maw. “Then let’s call things as they are. You’re no lady, and I’m no fool who turns shepherd for sorry souls.” He gave her his back, then puffed again. “Good chance the next furrfiend will prove a friend, though. If you’re willing to slip your legs through those bars.”

Now her smile died, and she eased near with a salt in her throat.

“No fool, are you? And what else do we call men who turn mut before the call of Galehaven? We’re both caged with legs part, furrfiend, only difference is I don’t need hamroot to hug my bars.”

The fire in his oaken pipe died out. The gales corralled fierce against him and Kellid made no pants to outwind them. A third time, Kellid turned to her, only now he did not look with the impressed pupils of a prospect friend, but instead the watching eyes of a true beasthunter. Wild was his stare, though it found no vice in her beyond the cut of her tongue, and thus no devilry for his wanton blade to expunge. He settled, indignant, then strode closer so that their minds could share a stage.

Drawing near, Kellid found her grow before the violet eve. Her shoulders widened, her forearms tensed with some dormant bulk. In those legs he had chastised her for, he now found a power she ailed to conceal. Her pale form glossed, engrossed in that fleeting light, and where there fell shadow there laired strength. Understanding that this was no gutter flock for him to empty out impulse against, Kellid nodded slowly.

“It’s a wonder you’ve been hung by a chain, instead of by your neck,” he scolded, unserious. “Or did you scare the hangman off with that mouth of yours?”

Swift, she readied a retort. Her jaw worked with an eager jibe, undecided between a bribe, a threat, or a complement that might slacken her chain or leave a file between her bars. Their eyes locked and her mouth loosed, but in that instant a flare of light mantled her gaze. Honeyed purple filled her sights, and the falling sun dragged all focus with it into the horizon. Cold were the winds, sharp was the beasthunter’s watch, yet still did the solemn sun carry her beyond it all.

In a moment, Kellid’s caution was deaf to her. Their game was dust that a faded day dissolved. She, in her cage, saw only that horrid, wonderfully wrong canvas of magenta as it fissured--lightning-like--through dusk’s shade; some starry wrestle. Her aim to grab the dagger at his belt died, while the ruse of her tongue fell away. There was, in her, only that elsewhere light.

“That ain’t a thing so bad,” she hoped, quiet.

Kellid stuttered, staring. He stammered before the sunset, bewildered by her words--her focus; unflinching. Tried as he may, he could not understand her, or see what was right in a sky so common and so deformed and so gnarled with violent light.

“Never seen a sunset before?” he asked, seeking to rift whatever intent stirred her, irked him. “What, was your cage turned to the wall last night?”

She ignored his insults, instead trying to smile.

“It just seems wrong…” she said, “killing a man before such a fine sight…” Kellid shook, made alert, but she spoke on, lightly as ever but managing command of him still. “Is it pretty enough, do you think, to make the pair of us any less ugly?”

Then Kellid was silent. Starvation must have been speaking to him, then, for he could not match those wounded words to her zealous gaze. His very presence at once suffered affront and its merits he could not sort. The confusion stung him, so it was then easier to reject her as a madwoman indeed.

“I oughta pamper m’self, then,” he said in turning. “If even the crazed can call me ugly.”

He walked past her, keen to take her out of mind, and something in him knew that she and her stare were unaffected by his steps. Escape, murder, or something as meagre as a pinch of hamroot--all urges were forgot by that troubled captive, and somehow, in nothing other than the fading violet of a tumbling sun, Kellid felt worthless.

Irked, he carried on quicker, until the bald woman was nothing other than another cage that happened to hang behind the brothel. Ugly? he thought, outraged. Poor enough to beg for flower but too good to treat me kind? It could not be understood. She had meant in soul, he considered, but what could she possibly know of him to make such a claim: a stance that avowed his very being wrong? Uncomfortable, uncertain, and put at unease by the mere thought of her, he staked his sights higher, and lent his spite to her chain-hung kin.

Pulleys and iron links laced along the rooftops, then darted above byways like clotheslines. In their wake they drooped the sickly and the uncivil. Hacking blood on the strewn stone below, belching pleas to each passing denizen, the zealots were a diseased hail. When he dared to look closer, if merely to convince himself that the bald woman was nothing more than another cog in a clan, Kellid beheld Eritle’s crime. While some were ragged, many of the men and women were stripped and freezing, unveiling their rotted skin submerged in old warts. They wrapped chewed fingers around their bars, shivered like iron clasps choked their wrists. Scratches covered their necks, much of a blood still wet, as if they tried to rip out their own throats rather than endure the Patch’s pain. Pale, cloudy eyes fell down against Kellid from between iron throbs, though despite any believed blindness he felt all too seen by their trembling, hating glares. All were slender of an extreme sort, with their every ragged inhale pressing bones to the wind, and their hairs, regardless of age, were long and greyed, mop-like atop their twitching necks. They coughed hoarsely, sobbed from agony alone, and leaked lumps of red mucus down their wrists; a grime either unnoticed or uncared for. These folk, so brutalized by the Patch’s pull, did naught even to wipe their eyes of tears.

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Suddenly his head had a great weight and his neck strained to sport it. Kellid ducked down, remembering why folk in Eritle bore low hoods even when the rain was gone. Near his foot, blood from a bit finger dripped. The thought was imposing, but undeniable: were there truly criminals hanging overhead, or only the plagued, whom higher folk deigned to divide from the unafflicted whole?

He could not pain himself with such wonders, as every conscious grant to their wellbeing dragged an unwieldy mind back to the bald woman, who at once became guiltless before him. He could not fathom her, in her sunset, as a villain of a heart so unworthy that it demanded chains, so he found solace in removing her from thought altogether. Hurried, but hardly so brisk as to warrant a common man's stare, Kellid advanced, down the great hill.

The trail was beaten and jagged, curving awkwardly to berth rocks, trace below slumped landbridges. It winded side to side, but ever down, as an unsightly collapse of sodden, stirred homesteads stacked around it. Where it dipped, puddles festered, and when its dips curved deeper a road of rainwater crept snakish towards its base. The elderly here moved at an anguish, struggling to keep their footing but herded on by soldiers in cheap helms and breastplates, sword-bearing and branded by the seal of Galehaven. From their sight, all hid and stashed within tight alleys, and in the midst of their fear those impoverished bladesmen felt strength.

Or they did, until a beastfoe crossed their eye. Like leeches out from the murk that was Eritle’s bottom, the furrfiends skulked and stomped, dreary and ached. Their weapons--a harsh, makeshift armada of iron and ore--dragged behind them while their sights sowed earth. Their garb was sagged leather weaved with tears, always in shades of grey or black or brown, with as much skin hidden under wraps as they could manage before that defense stole their breaths. Miserable they were, but all knew better than to grace them a gaze. It was true what the hamlets of Arakvan told: that in living and dying among beasts, men too fell to depravity, and so like droned emblems of carnage’s cost, the furrfiends walked.

Eritle, on that eve, was a barracks for humanity’s worst sort. Already did the cliffed township bear its own rogues, but now it flushed with the barbaric and the elsewhere’d. In the chrome wet mists, danger lurked between each home, while the cabalder burned ever brighter and the doors were barred with only greater steel.

Yet Kellid was no stranger to bleeding homes nor the austere fears of its persons, so he strolled with comfort enough and before him bowed every head but those maddened high above. Alongside him then a step behind, a shadow followed. It sank through alleys and slid roof to roof, craven in its crawl. He heard that prowling shade indeed, but Kellid was unbothered, and snapping again he shot fire into his pipe, as the faithful thing kept reach.

The metal of his boots bashed each puddle they struck, splashing old rainwater onto his lead greaves, under which creased brown pants of linen, boarded in white wraps. White wraps infested his forearms as well, ending only when they met the lead of his gauntlets at their forefront and the leather of his shoulders at their rear. Out from his left deltoid curved a horn, bolted into an iron crest. The horn was white, slit in thin scribes, and strong enough for none to mistake it as a thing from the world of man. Over his right arm was leashed a little spine from some babe blairhound, and from his left breast, atop the iron plate strapped to his core, old blood dripped low enough to his ribs one would fail to believe it was long dried. Under the iron of his chest ran black leather so worn it neared grey, though the short cloak at his back was wetted enough with rain its grey came white.

His head was unguarded, and a dark brown rattail--for which all but a few rebel hairs were pulled back--hung over his cloak and the hood he seldom rose. Stubbled and scarred, his face was a scrawny mold that could be called bilious were it not for the strength in his jaw and temple. His brows were dense, and below them sat wide yellow eyes that were so beady they often caught light, and lent Kellid a spot of sadness.

But the cries of the caged assailed him, and so his hood was drawn, and all his vulnerability perished. The sides of the hood were stretched cloth stringed by tiny zinc coils, and on them perched a cask of steel; dented, round and dark. It was in effect a half-helm, conjoined to his hood. The eyes were narrow slots that showed only the sharp, inscrutable yellow of his eyes. The steel reached his nose, encased it in a short beak, then stopped to show the scowl below it.

With the helm drawn, Kellid became an immediate predator and downcast eyes drifted elsewhere. So hardened was this newborn gaze that it stole any privy of his arms, but at his hip did indeed sit a sabre--fearsome, with a bladed hilt, coated in erovite, and when steel sparked against it it was said the blade shone red.

Although his demeanor had become a frightening thing, Kellid donned his helm only to escape the onlookers, returning to the banal yet trepid realm of the furrfiends as just another masked murderer. As such he slipped through soldiers and comrades alike, as those of Galehaven pretended at grit and those of the swards imagined they were elsewhere. For beasthunters, much time amidst the unsightly made townships into a worse discomfort. Years amidst monsters caved a man’s civility, and with each shambling peasant passed their minds flickered with fake threats and the bloodshed needed to end them.

What brought this brutish ensemble to Eritle was an errand on behalf of a mysterious benefactor, who paid well for secrecy and dark deeds. He had presented himself as an entrepreneur, seeking to turn dead space into wealth and unearth riches from the world below. Kellid remembered his pitch, spoken from behind the backs of a dozen armed guards, eclipsing goodness and the benefit of the land, but at day’s end gold was gold, and only its spenders would be better off. Many a furrfiend had come under this man’s employ, many back-alley miscreants and amateur wildmen, but only those that survived to the trial’s end would ever see their pay. Thus Kellid passed each comrade with a veiled sorrow, knowing they would not live to see the fruit of their efforts and learn that their lives were staked on a wish.

Eritle was their hub, and to ensure it did not fall to a host so grizzly, fighters from Galehaven were deployed to preserve the Vithicar’s justice; a recent but most routine ploy at affirming power. But the furrfiends kept only to themselves, if not drafted already into the same service, and Kellid had seen naught but cages sprout up behind the coming of the All-Father’s ignoble disciples. Ah well, he sighed, soon we’ll all of us be gone, and this sad heap of a town can suffer again in peace.

Then the object of his intrigue presented itself, a climb lower, at the township’s doormat, where armsmen and a rare few steeds grouped and stamped, that in Eritle were an image beyond belief, as years past had the last of their Wilderwheat mares perished, from famine, fatigue’s illness, and men’s own cruelty. But of course, the Scourge too had its taste. The benefactor who had collected so many trained killers like bobby pins stood shielded amidst the cluster. His name was Ervellyn Aelsen, or at least such was the name he had given the humble and unknowing to which Kellid belonged.

Aelsen certainly did not fit the role he played. Rather than distinguished robes as would suit a person of prestige, he bore a great grey cloak that immersed him like a blanket. Only his hands, slender and gloved white, protruded from the ashen mass. His hair was short, dark brown, with shaved lines probing the right side of his head. A silver stud pierced his left brow, and below both was a twitching black gaze. His age was modest and his features insignificant, save for the fullness of his lips and the cut that slid down them. On his back, of great interest to the keen Kellid, hung a large crossbow of black wood and silver. The man was sized like any other, though he carried with him a sway of experience that the crossbow’s scrapes affirmed.

Standing like a common man, he heard petitions and inquiries from the soldiers like a king and treated each with a frank earnesty. At once it was clear that Galehaven did not dispense its bladesmen for Eritle, but instead for this cloaked figure who could afford to be kept alive. All their cages risen, all the scrutiny upon the whims and faults of poor modest life, were the fault of this Aelsen, who stood as calm as if he were immune to the guilt. Another liar, thought Kellid, in service of secret wants, for faraway masters. How could he endure it?

“You as surprised as we were?” asked a voice.

In turning, Kellid found two guards, adorned in steel with the patchwork of blue and gold, and an uncompromising boredom that shunned each sunlit sight and brought their words to one such as he. Kellid inspected them for but a moment, unimpressed, unthreatened. The two were gruff, men molded out from a lasting groan, leaning against the front of another’s hearth. A drip from the roof above parted the space between them, as they clung to shade’s warmth and left Kellid below the clouds. That drip garnered more interest from the furrfiend than the soldiers could.

“Looks nothing like a man of wealth,” they whined. “More like one of you lot, I think.”

“Do you?” Kellid asked, stern but with disinterest still.

The soldier diverted his eyes, pivoted awkwardly in his lean. “Did you ever imagine fate would drag you to a place like this?” he wondered, watching the boarded homes and the frail lights quivering within. “Skies of gold, but with folk who couldn’t give a copper if a blade was to their neck… makes you wonder what we’re really protecting out here.”

“I never wonder long,” Kellid answered. “When you hear the howls at night and shelter is far off, you lose reason to fight beyond keeping the claws from your skin.”

“It’s hard work, innit?” the other asked from behind a firm, sterile stare. “Killing what’s out there?”

Kellid nodded, and made eager the man crossed his arms.

“I thought I could do it, once, y’know. When I was young, yet.” His head shook, well-humoured and in shame as he tugged up his shirt, showing three ancient thrashes against his gut. “Then I faced m’ first horror, and I knew I was a bigger fool than him down there.”

The three turned towards Aelsen, as the soldier spoke on.

“Fuck does some uptown bastard like him hope to find way out here? Ask me, he’s just another whoreson with too much gold and too much time, who thinks he’s found a way to earn something real.” He spat. “He’ll learn, same as I did.”

“You didn’t have an army at your back,” his partner rebuked.

“You’d be surprised,” said Kellid. “To see how quickly--down there in the dark, in the underearth--an army turns to nothing but voices lost to darkness. A million blades can’t keep him safe, if the time comes when that crossbow shoots askew.”

“Hell’s a ‘million’?” the first asked.

Kellid shook his head, forgetting himself, irate at the early loss of his guise. “A sum far beyond any of us. A million’s what will suffer, when Ervellyn delves too deep and brings deep things back up with him.” Kellid puffed from his pipe and the pine reek of hamroot filled their air. “He’ll see what he came for, to be certain.”

“Every beasthunter I’ve talked to,” the soldier began, “talks like they just lost a loved one; nothing but bitterness an’ old pains, nowhere’s near forgotten. Why d’ you ever do it, furrfiend? Aye? What’s a few silvers worth, when you have to see the things you’ve seen, undo ‘em, survive ‘em and make it home? What can ever make all that alright?”

The beasthunter shrugged. “Would you believe me, if I said I did it for the people? Eritle, the Wilderwheats, faraway Galehaven… For the good of the land?”

A laugh answered. “I’d sooner believe in the Argolese Giant.”

“Is that it?” the other asked, serious. “Do y’ really go out there in the night just so that some sorry bloke you’ve never met can sleep safer?”

Silence fell over Kellid, dragging his gaze down to the puddle between them. In it, he beheld himself, looking back up with a steel beak and yellow eyes. “Of course not,” he remembered. “I do it cause I’m too bloody dull to be a mason.” He turned away from their chuckles to look at Aelsen again and hide what was a joyless face.

“Well,” the first said. “You’re the least mad furrfiend we’ve seen for days, I’ll give you that. Funny, even. And with a helm I’d pay a leg for.”

Over his shoulder he found them again, with a hawkish, hunting stare. They stilled and the chuckles ceased. “It costs a heart,” said Kellid, gravely.

Somewhere, a horn blew, and the town rattled. Ghouls to the evening call, furrfiends in a double dozen emptied the streets on their way low. The chrome mists shuffled and spewed wild-eyed men in grey garb, with horrid blades at their backs. The shambling horde reached the lip of Eritle, where a mud courtyard gave way to a series of wobbling bridges that lead the way down below, then stopped to look wearily onto Aelsen, who had stood up on a barrel to be seen. Kellid was of course among them, along with almost every guard the town had been gifted.

“Nigh’ time, friends,” said Aelsen, sly but sure. “Below, the caravan is being prepped for our leave; ready to carry home the wealth and material I know, after so many days in this wooden swamp, we all crave.” Some laughed, most stayed silent. “The road will be arduous, I will not lie. But there are many of us, and some of the most fearsome beastkillers known to Arakvan.” He gestured to the soldiers. “Alongside Galehaven’s finest.”

Aelsen took a moment to inspect the crowd. He saw their nervous, tired faces. He saw the limp in the experienced, the bat in the young, the cracks in their blades, and all the tears in their leather. Then his mind flicked to what lay ahead and the horror they would dig for together, and in sight of the drab band he fought the urge to smile.

“Our path is dangerous, friends. But at its end, Arakvan will be made better, and, of course, every man here will walk away with fuller pockets. Do be steadfast. If you fall in the underearth, there will lie your grave forever.”

Then chatter rippled and the mass moved ahead. In files they tread through the gate, from bridge to bridge, rock to rock, until there was again grass beneath their feet, and the great shadow of high Eritle swallowed them. The caravan rolled southeast, with a worthy force of the skilled and doomed around it. As their march took to the fields and the wail of blair hogs engulfed them, Kellid gave a last look back to sodden Eritle. There it laid, with the rift of Argolan hungry at its hip and a terrible drop at its every turn. He saw figures shuffle to the rockledge to watch them leave, and in truth there was a great sum who did at last leave their homes without fear, but Kellid could sense also how empty the town now looked in leave of its defenders, and Argolan’s yawn grew only greater.

Thunder boomed then. Rain fell in torrents to slay the clear sky. Again, the cliff wept and its air burned chrome.

Kellid felt a sigh surface, but he swallowed it, and looked gently at a shadow hidden away in the near stone that followed him still. Kellid frowned, and the two shared a silence, until he carried on.

Behind them, another shadow stifled to watch their march. Through the heavy boards of a high-up home, a squat witness waited, until the silhouettes of Aelsen’s horde were fed to the horizon and the hills that carried it.

Then his eyes--a brilliant gold--narrowed, ready, and when he stood his slot between the boards bore only crimson.