A March of Woe (Overthrown Book 3)

by Aaron Bunce

“That sounds nice,” Roman said, truthfully. “After? It will just be a short visit to help put the place out of my head for good.”

  “I don’t think that is a good idea. Like I said, it is going to be dark soon and we don’t want to be caught out at night,” she said, her smile faltering and tone growing less playful, more firm.

  Tusk circled around behind him, the dog instantly picking up on her sudden change in tone and posture. The dog noticed, and thus, so did Roman.

  “Just a quick stroll then? I just need to duck my head in, say hi to Dennah, drop off this wonderful smelling basket, and we’ll go. I’ll be there and back before you can string a jackrabbit,” he said, setting off towards Marna’s.

  Alina slipped forward and cut him off, her eyes narrowed and penetrating. “I said it’s not safe!” she snapped.

  Roman rocked back, the change in her tone severe.

  “If it’s the hunter, you can come with me? Plus, I’ve got ole Tusk, the bane of wild pigs, too! I mean we won’t be there long. I just feel like I need to see it again for closure,” he said with a disarming smile and moving around her.

  Alina jumped next to him, her arm snaking around his as she pulled him close. She cast him a sideways smile, flipping her curly brown hair and exposing her neck.

  “There will be plenty of time for you to go another day. Besides, it’s just a burned out barn. Come, we will enjoy a hot meal and a few mugs to warm our bellies. Maybe Marna will have Bale sing and play his drum. Your friend can come, if you want her to,” Alina said, playfully pulling him forward. Her arm felt rigid and unyielding clamped around his. He didn’t need Tusk to know that she’d changed.

  “Okay,” Roman grumbled, finally, allowing her to guide him.

  They set off up the lane, his toes numb from the cold. By the time they reached Marna’s tavern the shadows were drawing long, the clouds breaking apart and revealing a periwinkle sky in the east. He tromped up the steps, knocking snow loose before walking inside.

  Marna’s tavern was filled with people, the fireplace burning heartily and fresh candles glowing on every table. The tables were full, people quietly sipping from tankards or dipping chunks of bread into bowls of stew. A group of men stood before the fire, puffing on pipes, pointing to the stuffed heads, and gesturing as if spinning grand stories.

  A couple noticed them enter and threw their hands up into the air happily. “Roman!” they cried. The rest of the tavern turned, some waving and others crowding in to pat him on the back. Alina stayed at his side, her body pressed into his. They bumped and jostled him, jolting them together. He reached down, catching her around the waist. She was close, her lips hovering just below his. It felt as if he could tumble bodily into her large eyes at any moment. She leaned in ever so slightly, pulling him into her, his hands sliding over her curves.

  A sharp pain flared in his rear suddenly, and Roman pulled away. Tusk released his hold on his hindquarters and disappeared into the crowd. Bale appeared through the mob around them, the young man’s face split in a wide smile. “Come, sit, have some stew and ale!”

  Roman broke free from Alina and the crowd, a fog clearing from his mind. He rubbed his eyes and tried to shake away the cobwebs.

  “I would love to,” he said, mastering himself a little. “But I think I need to lie down for a short rest. It has been a long day. So much has happened, and I believe it is catching up to me.

  Bale looked crestfallen, his smile faltering.

  “Perhaps I will return for some stew and a warm drink, after a bit of rest?” Roman asked, turning to Alina.

  The young woman eyed him quietly, the crowd finally breaking apart around them. Finally, she smiled and nodded, “I cannot imagine rest in the forest is easy in this cold season. I will try not to exhaust you so thoroughly tomorrow.”

  She leaned in suddenly, and whispered, “To remember me by,” and planted a quick kiss on his cheek. Then she turned and left.

  Heat washed up Roman’s neck and over his face. He was painfully aware that Bale was still standing there, watching him, so he nodded and made quickly towards the hall in the back.

  The noise died down as he turned the corner in the hall, their room sitting at the end, the door in heavy shadow. He approached silently and rapped on the door. The floorboards creaked on the other side, but the door didn’t swing open.

  “It’s Roman,” he whispered. A pregnant moment later, a sliver of light appeared between the jamb, and Dennah’s face appeared.

  Pushing the door open, Roman slipped into the room and closed the door shut behind him. Tusk lay down before the fire, his fur as black as coals. He growled quietly, before turning back to the fire.

  “Where have you been all day?” Dennah asked, her voice urgent, even angry. Her sword hung at her side.

  “I…I,” Roman staggered, taken aback by her tone. He looked to Tusk, but the dog provided no help. “You collapsed, so I spent time in town, visiting folk. See,” he said, holding up Noble’s basket.

  “I woke up, and you weren’t here. I didn’t know where you went, so I waited, and paced. What if you didn’t come back?” she asked, her eyes wide and glassy. Roman could see it on her face. She was scared, and considering what they’d been through recently, that spoke volumes.

  He set the basket down on the table, Tusk instantly curious about the sausages hanging over the side. Dennah paced over to the door, lowered her ear to listen, and returned to the fire.

  “Lucilla woke me. She tended to my hands,” she said, indicating her bandages. “She acted very strangely, Roman. I…I can’t explain it. She was just talking, and then she started to twitch. I think she was trying to tell me something, but she just couldn’t spit the words out. ‘Not what he seems’ I think she said. I went out to look for you, but the tavern was full of people. They wouldn’t let me leave…kept saying ‘you’re safe now’ and blocked the door. It scared me proper, Roman. I haven’t left this damn room since. They are watching me, all of them.”

  Roman watched Dennah start to pace again, Tusk’s head turning to track her as well.

  “The girl that helped us in the forest, and brought us to town,” Roman started to say, trying to form the sentences in his head before he spoke them, to understand what it was he had to say, but also, to believe it. “She took me to her father. The girl was Alina, the little girl I brought back from the farm.”

  Dennah abruptly stopped pacing, her gaze snapping onto him. Tusk growled quietly behind her, as if confirming his story.

  “What? How is that possible? I thought she was…I thought you said she was just a little girl?” Dennah asked, her confusion deepening. She turned abruptly and banged her sword into the rocking chair. She gave a frustrated sigh and tossed it onto the bed.

  “I talked to Garon, but he’s not Garon. Dennah, he knew what happened to us at the fort. Somehow, he knew about the Crow. Well, not specifically, but he knew that I was touched by one of his kind. He said that he can hear their voices –that they are all connected, and that part of the Crow lives on inside me. He’s a Nymradic, just like the Crow, and someone called the ‘Evermother’”… The words tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop them. He eventually fell quiet, his voice dying away, the silence stretching out between them.

  “Is that good? I mean, the Crow helped you, right?” she asked, finally breaking the silence.

  Roman took a deep breath, and tried to make sense of his chaotic thoughts.

  “He told me we are safe here. That he watched me for a time at Garon’s farm, then at the orchard, and again at the barn. He knows about all of it. He used some power on Alina, growing and aging her. I still see her in there…Greta’s daughter,” Roman said, searching the room and avoiding Dennah’s gaze as he tried to put his thoughts in order. “It still feels like Alina, but at the same time…I don’t know, I can’t quite explain it.”

  “How can we explain any of it, Roman?” Dennah said, rubbing her face. “The girl remembers you? Did she tell you anything?”

/>   Roman noticed immediately that Dennah, despite knowing her name, decided to refer to Alina as “the girl”. “How do we know who to trust?” he mumbled.

  “It is like we’ve stepped into the folktales my Nan used to tell me. I used to wish that I could jump into those stories, and relish in the magical and the fantastic. Now…I just want my ma and pa’s house…something simple and safe. Through it all, I can’t stop thinking about what you said about the farm, and the orchard. All those people and livestock, just dead. And the smell when they brought the bodies back from the orchard,” Dennah responded, quietly, her face screwing up.

  Memories instantly crowded into Roman’s mind, Greta’s blue apron sitting like a solitary spot of life amidst a sea of death. He shivered, trying to force them away, but then the orchard bubbled up into his thoughts, the pale, dead faces peering up and out of the wind-swept grass, Max’s body left to swing in the crook of a branch like a festival decoration.

  “I don’t trust it,” Roman said, suddenly, startling Dennah.

  “Okay…” she said, watching him wearily, her eyes wide and unblinking.

  “Everyone we’ve seen so far has greeted me as if we were old friends. Some of whom I’d never exchanged words with before today. It’s not like folk were mean or hostile to me, but save for Frenin, the Hopbarrows, and Berg, no one really went out of their way to make me feel like part of the town,” Roman continued.

  “…and it is what you wanted? To be welcomed, and accepted?” Dennah asked, simply.

  He nodded, remembering the comforting warmth that spread throughout his body when people he hardly knew greeted him boisterously by name.

  “…and the girl, the daughter of the woman that was like a mother to you after your father died, comes to your rescue in the forest. Was she friendly with you?” Dennah asked.

  Roman felt his face grow hot, and hastily shrugged, not knowing how Dennah would respond if he told her the truth. That they spent the day playing like children in snow, visiting shops, and... His stomach flipped as he remembered how they’d been smashed together by the crowd. He was all too aware of the soft edges of her body pressed into him, her pale brown eyes melting what he’d believed to be a steadfast resolve. She wasn’t a girl anymore, that fact flooding Roman with guilt.

  “What’s the matter?” Dennah asked, taking notice of his conflict.

  “Oh…” he sputtered, ashamed of his lingering thoughts. “When we left Noble’s shop, just before we came back here, I wanted to stop by and see how you were doing, but after that I wanted to see the winter barn – to see that wretched place on my own terms, and hopefully put it out of my head. Alina changed. She snapped, insisting that it was too close to dark and it was dangerous.”

  Dennah stood and walked over to the window, where the late afternoon sky was still darkening. “It is already growing dark, and if that creature is still out there, you could hardly blame her,” she argued.

  “You didn’t see her. It was strange. I don’t think it had anything to do with the darkness. I think it is something else,” Roman countered, and stood, buttoning up his padded jacket and lifting a cap off the table. He strode over to the window, turned the latch and pulled it open, ice breaking and skittering across the floor.

  “Where are you going?” Dennah asked.

  “I just need to see for myself. I’ll sneak through the buildings and be back before anyone is the wiser. I told them I was tired and needed a lay down,” he said, and promptly propped up his weight on the sill and crawled out. He turned to close the window behind him, just as Dennah stuck their sword belts out the window and into his arms.

  “What are you doing?” he whispered.

  “You’re not leaving me here by myself,” she hissed back, then donned a pair of thick gloves over her bandages, and followed him out.

  Roman pulled on the sword belt, and held Dennah’s out to her as she dropped gracefully into the snow. Roman clicked his tongue twice, and a moment later Tusk sprang through the window, his fur turning white as soon as he landed in the snow.

  They pulled the window closed, and quietly made their way back into the trees, careful to give the western edge of the sleepy town a wide berth. Roman sent Tusk out before them, the dog almost invisible against the snow and ice, scouting a safe path forward.

  They encountered a solitary figure. A man, heavily bundled in furs, walked a circuit along the western road. They crouched in a cluster of scratchy shrubs, waiting for him to make his turn.

  “Feel familiar?” Dennah asked, elbowing him in the ribs.

  “Yeah, but this time we both have clothes on,” Roman said, whispering and chuckling quietly.

  “…and you didn’t just burst into flames and give birth to a fire demon,” Dennah added, laughing.

  Roman glared, putting a finger to his lips, but his smile broke through. Dennah abruptly went quiet, the mirth dying in the cold air. Their reminiscing likely led her further down that dark path, where Banus would always be waiting. He squeezed her arm and together they ran out of the cover and across the road, moving through the clustering and skeletal birch and aspen trees, and into the concealing evergreens.

  They expertly picked their way through the foliage, the sky growing darker, drawing out the shadows between trees. Finally, after picking their way through the trees, the town disappeared behind them. The forest looked so familiar, and yet oddly foreign at the same time. Tusk paced on ahead of them, just out of sight, his body so close to the ground he was almost one with the snow.

  Wind swirled in confused, lazy currents, picking up the powdery snow and forming miniature, white cyclones. The strange little storms cut through the trees, destabilizing as soon as they came into contact with something, exploding in a shower of icy particles. Roman had spent a good number of his winter seasons tracking game through the snow, and thought he’d seen most of what the weather could offer.

  “Have you ever seen anything like that?” he asked Dennah. She shook her head, her brow creased.

  Roman tromped through a wide clearing, the breeze blowing up from the south, the cold air tinged by a subtle odor. It was bitter and sharp, like wet cinder and smoke-burdened soil. They were close.

  A quick glance sideways told Roman that Dennah smelled it, too. Her face was tight, the tension obvious in the way she moved. He didn’t realize it at first, but his hand had slipped to the reassuring grip of his sword.

  The winter barn appeared as they passed the last copse of spruce trees, its structural timbers sticking up into the air like the ribcage of some massive, felled beast. The north and west walls hadn’t completely burned, leaving a stubby wall of ruined, horizontal planks perhaps twice his height. The parts of the old barn he could see were smoke blackened and warped.

  Roman and Dennah stopped, silently inspecting the ruined building, both searching their memories and feelings. The wind whipped over the barn, quietly whistling through gaps in the wood. It sounded strangely like people crying in pain, the smell now heavily tainting the air. It wasn’t just stronger, but the odor of ash and smoke was almost overpowering.

  Tusk appeared behind him, the dog circling around from the other direction. He was on edge, his nose struggling to cut through the overpowering stench to identify anything else. He slunk around the northern wall and stopped, growling low.

  They followed without a word, approaching the dog with tentative, apprehensive steps. Roman noticed it immediately. Fresh tracks marred the deep snow. They disappeared around the winter barn, leading north towards town in an opposite arc to the one they had used. And it wasn’t just one set of tracks, but a wide path smashed down into the snow by many different sets of prints.

  “Why would they still be coming out here?” Roman whispered, working through his thoughts out loud.

  “People died. They lost a goodly portion of their winter provisions,” she reasoned. “Maybe they are still cleaning up from the fire?”

  “I don’t know. Food was lost, people died. I can see them burying t
he dead, but beyond that, I don’t see a reason for coming back,” he countered, tromping forward and around the corner. Loose planks rattled in the breeze next to him.

  The wall abruptly ended, the burned planks ending like rounded, scorched bones. The interior of the long barn loomed before them, the space covered in a massive, domed pile of snow.

  “Snow might be the only thing that wants to be here,” Dennah muttered next to him, and came forward, driving a boot into the thick, white powder. Her foot thudded into something surprisingly solid, a crumpled piece of burlap appearing from underneath.

  “What…?” they breathed in unison, leaning in.

  “What would you have to cover? Everything burned,” Dennah said, bending over. She grasped the thick burlap, and with a quick pull, flipped it back.

  Roman staggered back, struck by an overpowering wave of stomach churning rot. Dennah doubled over and heaved into the snow, the sound of her gagging almost unseating Roman’s constitution completely. After a moment, when he was sure that he wouldn’t be sick, Roman moved forward. He grabbed the burlap, careful not to touch the gnarled, stick-like objects sticking out of the snow, and pulled hard. The pile of snow shifted. Dennah appeared at his side and took a hold, and helped. Together, they dragged the snow-covered sheet free, carting it all the way back into the trees before stumbling and falling together into the snow.

  Roman pushed off the ground, every instinct telling him not to look, that he should turn and walk away, but he fought it. His gaze pulled up, and he faltered, his knees giving out and sending him sprawling onto his rear.

  A large mound of withered, desiccated bodies covered the fire-scorched ground, twisting together like gnarled firewood. Dennah teetered next to him, her hands pressed tightly over her mouth to muffle pained sobs.

  Tusk appeared next to him, the dog’s body gently pressed against his legs, providing an unspoken reassurance. Roman’s gaze crawled over the pile, numbly searching the lifeless faces, as he tried to make sense of the wasted life.

  “It’s all of them,” he muttered, his throat tight and voice failing.