Chapter 11 : The Thousand Plagues

Miles upon untold miles, did the Lunga’ar stretch south. A rabid titan, it split the countryside from the Whilderwheats down to the Bog of Ochros. And along its riverbanks, prowling like some craven merm-man, was Ulf Eldric.

The way was arduous, as often did the Lunga’ar spike and plummet, but its shores foamed thick, and in their float crept the most mild-mannered of beasts, who contented themselves on the eating of stowaway insects and the catfish of the stream. But the way ran long, and many a time came when Ulf’s soft steps were not enough to elude the fauna of that fjord, and he was bade to slay or flee. For the sake only of time he chose most the latter. Yet again, instances arose when blair hogs grew too bold and toadrigs reached their hammerhead tongues beyond the bounds of lilies and moss. And thus corpses were felled in patterns along the length of the Lunga’ar; some grizzly telltale of a greater predator’s passing.

It was made an easy thing for Eidrik and Horral to pursue the Northman unseen, for indeed the way was straight and true and well-evidenced, as Ulf stomached few detours if his blade could rent them swift. Where the river’s jagged bends tossed the two ajar, the rot of new death was keen on their snouts. In some disorderly game of cat and mouse, the outlander strode and his shadows filled with furrfiends, spotting from afar through their ivory spyglass.

Horral was especially light on his trail, but Eidrik’s steps came to drag. With equal doubt and wonder he turned often to gaze back north, where the shadow of the Haddlebush crept on the horizon and the Cleft of Teroe soon dominated the way north. His mind was wayward, true, but his steps answered to Horral alone. It was for his sake that Eidrik pushed onward, intent on seeing the aged fellow not lose his grin that hung lantern-like amidst them when night was dense, guiding the way and casting off the shade of worry.

The unlikely ensemble perused by a river hamlet, bustling with splashing rowboats and slung nets and the calls of catch and warning. It was most modest and the vibrance of the Lunga’ar painted its people merrily. Here there were wares to browse, shelter to share, and a refuge from the many ailments of the road unknown, however derelict. To the dismay and bewilderment of the furrfiends however, their dark leader routed past the hamlet and all its cheap spoils, returning himself to the grim wilderness instead. Eidrik was disconcerted by the sight, though Horral’s head came high. He pondered in a mystic light what solace one so battered sought. It seemed to him unlikely that such a thing could even exist, but the pace that outlander set was undeniable, and the commitment to see his way tread surmounted even the aetroll, so it could not be named false.

Still, fascination aside, the furrfiends came weary, as where they found a full night’s rest Ulf Eldric distanced from them. The outlander slept half the sum of a normal man, woke perhaps by nightmares or determination itself or both strewn together. He did not speak alone or soften in his way, and sights a tourist might hearken to he passed uncaringly. It was clear the man had seen beauty in his life before, but deemed a gawk only wasteful.

Night came and went and they were all left a trek lower, further out from the heart of the Whilderwheats, deeper into Thedrun, and nearer to the first bubbling pond of Ochros, with the Cleft a gateway to the far north. The shores hilled upwards gradually, until the collective looked down to find their boots on summits, rank with bald cypresses. The fjord was far below them and ceaseless; it swerved high and soon, through some strange twist of stone and wood, the river came level again. Then it split, with morning’s aureolin soft in its foams, and rushed ravenously down a steep arch of cliff. Ulf stared down the depth, considered a leap and a grapple to its base, but the rocks were wet and slick, and a poor grip could leave him crippled upon the stone, for carrion-cravers to find and devour.

Scowling, he turned eastward, and crept into a shallow wood that traced slanted down the cliff’s bank. The phantom vanished in the leaves with a rustle, and leagues away, the furrfiends ducked their spyglass to share a frown.

In a glade of that wood, surrounded by ruby-leafed cedars, sat a lone farmstead. Unfenced, the mark of hoof-like paws had desecrated the crops spanning to its front door. Mares like gaunt mongrels, called brungs, were slacked by the reins to the posts of the cabin. They were hungry things, sapped of their strength and majesty, but a mount in and of itself was a treasure to be seen, as scarcely were they found outside the bastions of Galehaven. Theirs was a neigh of angst. Nervously, they eyed the peripheral, expecting smittledogs or grown krawmors to come and bite from their flesh. Saddles wrapped around their ribs and dug deep.

Inside, the riders lurked; drifters in gold and blue, forsaking a duty in Ochros yet boasting of their crests all the same. The roof was small, the space cluttered with tools and oaken crafts, and seated at a short table were two soldiers with the farmer like wasps among the ant. Their swords were left upon the tabletop, solely so that they were seen. In their reflection, the fatigued gaze of the farmer tensed, though the span of his years and the hardship of his labour had brought him under a screen of aloof placidity.

His brows were thick and his tongue well-guarded. His speech was of grunts and sighs, and his body bulked with a dormant strength that was still minute amidst young arms. A scent of mint and hay swarmed that chamber, while morning brought a gold glow in the door ajar and over its floors. At the windows brushed petals and vine, and that dawn would be a fine thing were there better company to foster it with.

These wanderers from Ochros, however, were not that. Already had they fattened on his stock and tossed their discards to the wood beneath them. With a willful discourtesy, they moved where they wished and plucked what they wanted, all the while berating their aged host. They scorned his hospitality as an elder’s disinterest and jested of how his wife found him plain, so left him alone to his shack and his field, to plow and feel only plight. Of course, they knew nothing of that man across the table or the rancor he held, but Ochros was harsh and diseased, and their time in its fog left them spiteful of lives led normally and folk unbeknownst to bloodshed. The dread-stains of the Bog were steaming in their eyes.

Scarfing down a chunk of strawberry, the first of the soldiers—a broad foe of good fitness with fingers the size of sausages—chucked the stem to the wall, then turned his puffy, red-wet cheeks to his host.

“Some fruit you ‘ave,” he spat between chews. “Take it the missus wanted meat, though. That why she’s not ‘ere?” He badgered, leaning close. “Did the ol’ bitch need meat?”

Then the other chirped, and his was a countenance of jolly unrest. Thin were his arms, but swelled was his chest. “Ye see ‘er again, ye tell ‘er I’ll give ‘er some real fucking meat. She might even walk back to ye, cross-legged!”

Together, they laughed and spat strawberry onto his table. The farmer watched red pulps gush and sink into the wood. Already, he thought of how he would wash them out, what strand of cloth and what brand of soap he would treat to the table, as if the antagonism against him was some distant affair to which fate was unconcerned.

“Yeah, old boy’s not a talker,” said the fat one. “That’s why you’re out ‘ere, old boy? In the middle of pissing nowhere, with nothing but dirt to stick your cock in at night?”

More they laughed, more they ate, until his cupboard became a scarce space. Then his ale they found; one humble bottle of backwater swill, aged for a decade. He did not drink, and there it sat as a reminder of the day he stopped. Now, its cork was popped with a battering against the edge of the table, that broke too the glass of its neck. Hoisting it high like a trophy, the fat one waterfalled it into his gullet and gulped down the bitter brew as if it were only water.

“Me?” he burped. “Don’t mind quiet folk. Not at all. Knew this widow out in the bog. Tits like hams. Quiet, she was. Quiet till the end.”

The other laughed, then his glee waned, and the words weighed on him true until he frowned, uneasily. Anew, he gazed at his comrade and the bits of juice flying out from between his teeth. Then down he looked, to the width and power of those fat fingers, and at once he felt sick, like all the stock he indulged upon would soon come back up. He drank deep, until the thought was lost to a burning chest. The ale was fire on his tongue, but it did well in scattering his mind.

“Ochros…” he groaned, sick. “Things happen there. Just how it is.”

The farmer looked plainly against him, until the soldier’s weathered eyes rose, and pulsed with abashment. All the mud on his chin and the dirts in his teeth were made clear, then his returned watch became an unsightly thing.

“What?” he asked, loud. “Ye think I’m a liar? Ye think it’s—what? Pigeons and fucking pies down there? In the bloody fucking swamp?” Now he leaned it, and shot a finger of caution at the old farmer. “Ye think ye’d fare better, don’t ye? Than the lot of us?”

Hearing that rampant upset, the fat one laughed like he was hearing an old joke, resurfaced again between kin. Then he shook his head and raised the bottle.

“Some whoreson ye are,” that thrawn other griped. “Ye even know how to swing a sword, old man? Ye ever bore steel against a thing other than rabbits? And fucking rats!”

He slammed his fist down and the board below him cracked, sending the table into a tilt that snapped a leg. The measly feast and all its waste swiveled and fell, then rolled over the wood while the fat man jumped back, shocked but amused more.

“Fucking All-Father!” he chuckled. “You’re a right fiend, Jaerod!”

But Jaerod did not hear him. He saw only the farmer and those faroff eyes that could never be impressed; never illuminated with esteem or marvel. Not even terror, it appeared, could cloud his blunt stare. So Jaerod laughed wickedly, through a toothed scowl, then picked his blade up from the remnants and grabbed the farmer by his gray hairs. The sword pressed into his neck and cumbered his jugular. The strain on his scalp showed veins through his temple. His old eyes were frantic then, as air was short, but still fear was not in them. Jaerod panted nervously in sight of his snubbed effect.

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“Ye’d never make it,” he promised the old man. “Ye’d never come out what we’ve been in. Ye ‘aven’t the ‘eart for it.” He shook his head, fearful of something growing at the back of his mind that drove his steel deeper and brought his stare to a tremble. “No one ‘as the ‘eart for it.”

The farmer, who by name was Arrel, saw the madness. He saw the wild taint of torment and, more than that, the beat of guilt, but all of it was nothing to him. He remained blank, and wondered if he was to die that day. Outside his cabin, the brungs neighed with a sudden alarm, and then he frowned upon hearing his answer. Their panicked stammer dragged the soldiers outside; moths to flame, and before them stood a stranger from the dawn.

Clad in only black, the form was unyielding to light. Through old scars, Ulf found the pair and served them a dire dread. They fumbled for swords and soon bore steel against the trespasser. Mild in his intrigue, Arrel peered through the door from where he sat by his broken table, and beheld that shade of the wilderness with some agita, as it faced down his guests.

“Who are you, stranger?” the fat one asked. “We’re of Galehaven. Of the Clergy. You’d be wise to run off, ‘fore we get impatient. You don’t want enemies in the capital!”

Ulf only titled his head. “I’m taking your mare,” he told them.

They had been victims long enough. It was the suffering of Ochros that faced them then, outside that little shack. In the gaze of the commanding stranger, they saw orders and disregard and the pain of weakness that had for so long marked their duty. And they were unready to stomach it again.

“What’d you say, Northman?” the fat one asked, twisting his sword through the air as if gouging out an invisible wound. The other took a hurried step closer, descending the porch to face the wanderer on even ground, with a grimace shielding his dread.

But the wanderer did not care. He saw the cedars sway in the wind. He saw sunlight crisp the red of their leaves. And all the sky was blue, as if Arakvan forgot its own horror on that morning.

“I’m taking your mare,” stated Ulf.

The gales chilled the pair then. They looked to one another, unsteadied, but the moment of hesitance drew too long, and with a whip of air the gnarled blade of Ulf was drawn.

“Come then,” he commanded.

Through pride alone, they answered the challenge. They struck first, and Ulf’s sabre whisked thrice, then fell. Metal clung, a spark struck the grass. The black cloak of Ulf streaked past the two, as behind it they collapsed; the fat one with a slit throat and Jaerod with a stab through his eye that opened the back of his head. Blood puddled in the earth, and in the quick carnage the brungs gained fright and broke from their loose bonds to trot into the trees.

He watched them leave, then frowned, before turning his eye inward. Over the cabin’s threshold he stepped, where Arrel was found by a broken breakfast with a look of shock heavy upon him. It took some seconds for the Northman to deduce what had occurred with the littered food, and a second more to decide he did not care.

“Food, old man,” he ordered. “And I’ll leave you with what’s left of your table.”

His bewilderment neared defiance. Arrel stared in awe of all the unlawful deeds done in that morning, but soon he hastened to fetch a meal of bread and fruit. Half a cone loaf and just short of a dozen berries he perched upon a plate, touching them through a towel and never with his bare hands, then set all on the counter in the loss of his table. Ulf looked at the food with such disinterest it would be easy to think him full, but eventually, he ate a berry, as unnatural in his hand as an axe in a child’s. It was sweet, tender.

Arrel had already returned to his seat, hosting the wild nomad as if it were any other morning. And in turn, that nomad watched him. Arrel was steady in mind, reliable in body, but his hard work did little to conceal the white scab working up his shoulder. Under Ulf’s scrutiny, he hacked, and blood fell over his fist. A little white scab scrawled out from his palm. Infected with the Patch, Ulf realized, but with some time left to dwindle. The Northman did not believe that alone hollowed him to the extent that he could look upon murder in his home and not fall unnerved, and so he recognized it was loss.

Elsewhere, his sights struck, until all of that cabin was revealed to him. A second bed peeked its corner out from the back of the house, but its sheets were unused so long they puffed high. It was morning still, and married folk seldom slept alone, so at once he deduced that the shack fit two: a father and his daughter.

“What became of her?” he asked, idly.

Arrel’s inscrutable, desolate sulk suffered an instant blemish. His eyes widened, shocked further by the stranger’s skill, then settled in sight of all that he was and all the experience coiling despondent in his face. Arrel leaned back in his chair, let it finish its creak, then his gaze narrowed lazily again, and he sighed deep; through a want to relinquish speech rather than a soreness of the words summoned, but indeed, his soul too was burdened by them. This, Ulf heard, as if he had heard it a hundred times before.

“Hogs,” he grunted. “Came in night. Dragg’d ‘er from ‘er bed.”

The Northman nodded, indifferent. “Find the body?” he asked.

Arrel’s head shook. “‘Aven’t looked. ‘Aven’t dared.”

Ulf ate another berry and listened intently to the grind of his anguish. His glare flickered up a moment, recalling some seemly notion, then he nodded. “Good,” said Ulf. “Find some joy in what’s not known.”

“Hrm,” Arrel grunted again. “Ye don’t think I could stomach th’ sight?”

“No,” was the answer, frank. “If it were blair hogs, they would’ve bred her.” Ulf bit from the bread, chewed hastily to utter his words unclouded. “It ruptures the kidneys, bleeds one from the inside, ‘til death.”

At last, Arrel’s composure faltered. A bead of sweat fell from his yanked grays. The vision of such a thing darkened the creases of his wrinkled visage, until his face fell to shade. He buried it in his hand and rubbed down to his roots.

“All-Father’s eyes…” breathed the old man, strained in keeping his heart extant. “You don’t mince words, outlander. T’ think, a black in m’ home, telling me of m’ own daughter’s death.”

“A lie would not make it otherwise,” Ulf affirmed, undaunted.

Now Arrel nodded to himself and forced his head up again. “Twould not,” he concurred with a stray watch, before seeing again the asperous emblem floating in his hall, like the reaper come to tell of death. “Common, this seems to ye. Hrm? Death and misery…”

Another berry vanished behind his cut lips. Ulf swallowed hard.

“Aye. I’ve traveled long.”

“Ye’ve yet t’ see it, then. Eh?” asked Arrel, now equally void. “A reason to settle.”

The Northman winced, and his eyes bore a new rigidness. In Arrel’s words, he heard only delusion. He heard the folly of belief, that vowed life could be made stagnant without killing all its reason, and he heard vanity. The thought had met him before, but was left asunder.

“Like you did? What became of that, old man?”

“Ease, Northman. Ease,” said Arrel, emptying his last haste against the stranger. “Too many beasts afoot to trouble kinfolk with cruelty.”

“Maybe I found your reason,” the Northman admitted. “Maybe it’s an old road.”

Another bite. Another berry. Arrel was made witness to that cityscape of scars Ulf claimed as a face. In their ancient blood, there was buried pain. When the Northman’s face came burdened with even a subtle emotion that stretched his lips or widened his eyes, those old wounds cracked and red split through in droplets. His own body kept him miserable.

“A road yet tread?” asked Arrel, saddened.

“Does it matter?” Ulf snapped. “I stand here before you now, all the same.”

And there they were, together; bereft and abandoned to the waking world. Both lacked the heart to mince passion in their words. Both watched the sands of death fall upon them with each passing day. Dawn did its best to lighten them, but they were of an infinite dimness. They were kin, for a moment, in mourning. Arrel was fated to die in the coming months, all by himself in the woods, as his body gave way to the white scab of disease. Ulf was sentenced all the same, with each day that he rose and with each step he took further into nowhere. But again, neither had the spirit to wish it otherwise. This was their world, pitifully, and it had no wonders left to unveil.

“Aye,” said Arrel. “Love’s a fickle thing.”

At that, Ulf was awakened from his dawdling. The berry on his tongue lost its taste. With a flap of his cloak, the plate was abandoned, half-ate, and he stood by the door with his back to Arrel and all his fantasies in decay. There was no place for kinship on his road, and Ulf would not be slowed by the daydreams of the damned.

“Good ‘eve, old man,” he said.

But before sunlight could assail him again, Arrel stalled that affray with what he deemed a kindness. Though it was anything but, and in the shade of Ulf’s cloak he knew his words were wasted, but still he wished upon that kindred spirit a last courtesy.

“Mind yerself out there, outlander. Ye know beasts, true, but there are worse things than monsters. Men can kill ye just as easy. I’ve seen ‘em. Raiders in their iron. Furrfiends in their leather. Scarlet ones, even.”

To all his warnings, Ulf paid no heed, but when the last words were uttered he froze in his stalk. Evilly, with a malice so potent it shuddered the cabin and shot the dying man’s hairs high, the Northman turned his brown gaze upon him. A fury shook his old scars.

“Scarlet?” he asked, with a hiss.

“Hrm,” grunted Arrel, left off-guard from the sudden vigour cast against him. In a second, all of their companionship he envisioned was gone, and the power of destruction in the outlander loomed over him; a knife against his neck again.

“Speak,” Ulf ordered.

“What’s to say? They were a faraway thing. Headed north. A pair of weeks back, now.”

As a serpent constricts a sheep, Arrel was squashed under all of Ulf’s ire. His benevolence became foolhardy while his trust dried up. In his chair he shrunk, quivered, and life became a beloved thing to him again.

“North where?” the outlander asked with a crude jolt of his jaw.

“Through the Cleft, I wager,” he told truthfully. “Up Eritle way. Not much else there, for men of Galehaven.”

Again, Ulf was at the door with one foot beyond. “Speak not of this,” he commanded. “To anyone.”

“You’ll kill them, will you?” Arrel called.

Yet the stranger was gone. The wind brushed in, and on it was the stink of murdered men at his front door. Arrel was alone again, with only memory and scorn. It was without a scowl though that he rose from his chair; without wrath that he collected his shovel; devoid of anger that he dug two graves, behind his little cabin and late into morning. There, the guards from Ochros were laid for maggots to dine upon, but with the courtesy of a roof above them, albeit dirt, so that they did not meet the world beyond cold. Then old Arrel dug a third in his glade, and on his knees before it he prayed. He prayed for his daughter and the life she never got to live, and the thought of her smile—of her laughter, finally broke his dull discontent.

Arrel crumpled in the dirt, and his old face vexed with tears. Smiling through his sobs, he reminded her empty grave of their times together, with a whimsy so ecstatic it made him shake. He spoke proudly to that dingy pit of her fool dreams of seeing the world, the crops they used to tend, hand-in-hand, that now stood dry and stomped. He remembered the way she hugged him, when the ghost of his wife kept him awake, and he remembered the glow of her eyes when she told him to sleep again. Always was she brave, and he knew in his heart that that courage stayed with her until the very end.

Then Arrel produced a kitchen knife and slid it inside his wrist, down to the elbow. With a meek gasp, his limbs jerked. Arrel slid limp into the pit, while the blood of his arm filled it.

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