by Kody Boye
“Carmen,” Nova gasped, unbuckling the clasps along his ribs.
“Yes?” she asked.
“Bring some of that gauze over here.”
“I’m working on it, Nova. Don’t you worry. It’s not like any of us are going anywhere anytime soon.”
She has a point, his conscience whispered. You know she does.
No matter—he didn’t feel the need to negotiate on how much time she could take getting the medicine to him.
Bowing his head, expelling a long, held-in breath, he remained silent as Carmen diligently cut her way through leather and shirt with a dagger especially brought for the purpose of skinning or cutting things apart. Her hair falling from her head and onto his back, sending shivers down his spine, he bit his lip and closed his eyes as hard as he could to keep from screaming when the bandages were free of his skin.
Each time she pulled a piece of leather or shirt off, it felt like she was skinning him alive.
He wasn’t sure how much longer he could take this.
“You know,” the Dwarf said, spooning some gauze onto her hand and rubbing it into his back. “It doesn’t look as bad as you would think.”
“Really,” he grunted, grimacing. “How so?”
“Well… you just have four cuts.”
“You mean—“
“No. It looks like only one claw slipped through along your lower back, but none of them are very deep.”
But they sure hurt like hell.
“You’ll scar, that’s for sure, but it’s nothing life-threatening, I don’t think.”
“Tell that to people who die after surviving wild animal attacks,” Nova said, groaning as she seemingly pressed the gauze into the space between the cuts themselves. “Ouch.”
“I’m being as gentle as possible.”
“Define: ‘Gentle.’”
“I’m not slapping it on you, that’s for damn sure.”
You may be one of the best friends I have, Nova thought, but damn if you aren’t as stubborn as me any day
The thought alone made him laugh.
Carmen paused. “Sorry?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said, even managing a smile when the Dwarf continued to do her work. “Just thinking.”
“About what?”
Us. This.
Nova closed his eyes.
His wounds began to burn.
When Carmen finished bandaging his back and what little of his shoulders bore damage, they ate a brief breakfast of biscuits before continuing up the road, only momentarily stopping to mourn the horse. It immediately became apparent, from the matter of walking alone, that this trip, unless quickened by the happenchance of meeting fellow merchants, would take much longer than he had initially anticipated.
Normally, on a good day’s travel on a horse, it could take anywhere from one to two weeks to get to Ornala. Without horses, things would begin to take an even darker turn.
You can do this, he thought. Don’t worry. You’re strong.
Each step forward took them a moment closer to Ornala. He had to keep telling himself that, otherwise he was more than likely to give up before the day was over.
“Carmen,” Nova said, turning his attention down to the Dwarf, who carried the largest and more cumbersome pack as though it weighed nothing more than a piece of bread.
“Yes?” the Dwarf asked.
“You’ve never been this far west, have you?”
“No sir, I haven’t. Lived in Ehknac and Arbriter my whole life.”
“You said you were sixty,” he said, crossing an arm over his chest and adjusting his scythe against his shoulder. “And I remember you saying you can live to be a few hundred years old.”
“Yeah. We can.”
“I… I want to ask something personal, if you don’t mind.”
“Go ahead. I won’t answer if I don’t feel comfortable.”
“All right. Well… about your husband. He’s human and all, and I’m always worrying about something happening to me and leaving my wife behind, given that she’s so young and we don’t have a family yet—no one to continue my legacy and the sort.”
“Yeah. Go on.”
“I wonder… well, about you… what will you do when your husband dies of old age?”
“Go on, I suppose. I try not to think about things like that.”
“You have to though, don’t you? I mean, when thinking about the future, about what might happen to the other person or yourself.”
“I don’t think age ever really matters so long as the two of you have something in common,” the Dwarf said, skipping ahead of him and turning about in one complete circle, as if viewing the dense lack of nothing around them. “It doesn’t matter if I’m sixty and my husband is twenty-nine, almost thirty. I mean… he’ll die eventually, and I will too and so will you, but we can’t live life worrying about what will happen in the future, can we?”
“I guess not,” Nova said. “I mean… you’re not worried about how you’ll feel when it happens?”
“Oh, I’ll be absolutely devastated when Elrig dies, because as far as I’m concerned—as far as anyone’s concerned, actually—he’s the love of my life. Age doesn’t mean a thing when the two of you are happy.”
“I guess it must be a human thing then. You know, the stigma of being too old for one person and too young for the other.”
“I think there’s certain boundaries that have to be set, sure. Can’t pick on the weak or small, meek and naïve, the old and frail, that sort of thing. It gets too complicated when you’re too young to understand such emotions, but when you’re a full-grown adult? If someone cares, stick it up their ass, I say. It’s no one’s business if you’re in love.”
Nova tilted his head back and smiled.
While the afternoon continued to wane on, his thoughts seemed all the more at peace.
They were able to start a fire that night with the pre-dried kindling that had been arranged in their packs. Warm and hopeful around flames that glowed bright and strong, Nova rubbed his hands together as Carmen stirred the contents of the pan hanging from the support beam and smiled when he cast a look in her direction.
Ah, he thought, unable to resist the urge to smile back. Carmen.
“A lot better when there’s a fire, isn’t there?”
“Yes ma’am,” Nova replied, giving her a brief salute before spreading himself out along his bedroll. “I just wish we didn’t have to carry all of this shit with us.”
“Eh, it’s no big deal. It’s not even that heavy, if you don’t mind me saying.”
“You Dwarves must be naturally gifted in the strength department.”
“Well, yeah. Of course we are. How else would we spend our entire lives chipping away at the inside of a mountain?”
“You think they’ll ever finish mining everything in there?”
“In time,” the Dwarf replied. “Then they’ll just keep moving to the south, maybe even reach the top someday.”
“What do they do with all the stuff they mine?”
“Keep it. Some make jewelry, others statues. The king likes to have a room full of treasure, as cliché and out of the ordinary as that is. Most of it gets buried with him when he dies though, so—“
“You mean they put him in a coffin and fill it with all those jewels?”
“Not all of them, no—most, but not all. A lot of it goes to his heirs, if he has any. The royal bloodline is fairly strong within our society.”
“It’s nice to hear about something other than human stuff,” Nova said, accepting a bowl of soup when the Dwarf offered it. “I mean, life in Bohren got pretty dull after a while, especially after I married into the government.”
“Your wife is… a political woman?” Carmen asked.
“I wouldn’t say political, exactly, but she is the daughter of a mayor.”
“That must be interesting,” she mused, spooning some of the soup into her mouth. “Mmm. I must say, this doesn’t taste half bad.”
As he continued to shovel the food into his mouth, he sighed and looked up at the darkened sky before them.
Though it would likely not threaten them with rain, it would surely shadow the stars.
They continued up the road for the next few days in almost pure silence. Occasionally disturbed by a harsh wind, a few drops of rain and the seldom passing deer, little seemed to bother them throughout their trip and escapade toward the capital. At times, Nova thought he saw figures on the horizon—distant, darkened and seemingly led by carts—but no matter how many times he blinked, squinted or cleared his vision, they seemed to disappear: vanishing, seemingly, into the abyss.
There isn’t anyone traveling this road, he thought after one long, hard day of travel. It’s just us.
No matter how hard he wanted to believe otherwise, he had to remain content with the fact that they would likely not run into another caravan even though he wanted them to.
By light from the fire, he shifted through his belongings and pulled from his pack a long-sleeved shirt that he fully intended on wearing regardless of the flames burning before them. After carefully and painstakingly navigating his arms into the air, he pulled the shirt down over his chest, then sighed as the thick fabric contoured to his body and allowed him some semblance of warmth outside of the fire.
For it being so late in autumn, he was surprised it wasn’t colder than it already was.
“Carmen,” Nova said. “Do you want another shirt to wear?”
“I couldn’t possibly fit into anything of yours,” she laughed, rubbing her hands back and forth as if ready to create a fire for herself.
“I mean, to wear—something to cover up in.”
“That’s fine. No thank you.”
“All right,” he said. “Suit yourself.”
He pushed his pack to the side, spread out in his bedroll, then closed his eyes, sighing when the wind came up and brushed his hair away from his face.
It seems too convenient that we aren’t being followed.
After being pursued by the werewolf and having found their mount torn apart and eaten, it was any wonder he hadn’t considered such thoughts previously in more concrete detail. Maybe it was a case of him not wanting to worry about anything, or perhaps he had not a worry about the werewolves because his thoughts lay elsewhere, primarily on his back. Either way, he couldn’t dwell on it, because doing so would simply push him in an opposite direction and therefore shroud his concentration.
“Do you want me to take first watch?” he asked.
“I’ll do it,” Carmen said. “Don’t you worry.”
Closing his eyes, Nova burrowed into the bedroll as far as he could.
The caravan came in the middle of the night. Flushed from the darkness and guided by two bobbing lanterns, it appeared as a specter with its arms braced forward and its hands dangling before it. Flushing, a flourish here, a grand, sweeping arc there—the horses grunted as the cabby pulled them to a stop and then whinnied when a harsh wind began to stir from the north, as though signifying a great foreboding sense of dread that both Nova and Carmen should take heed to.
“Hello there,” the man atop the carriage said, shifting his weight as he looked down at the two of them. “Who might the two of you be?”
It was highly unlikely that the man had seen either of them in concrete detail. With Carmen nestled in her bedroll almost as far as she could be and Nova sitting up, they could have been anyone or anything, save a Dwarf and a man trapped on their feet and forced to wander without horses.
Pushing himself out of his bedroll, then into his feet, Nova approached the front of the carriage with extra care, then pushed his hand out to shake the man’s hand. “We were on our way to Ornala when we were attacked by a werewolf,” he said, watching the shrouded figure’s face for any sign of movement.
“A werewolf?” the cabby asked.
“Yes sir. A werewolf.”
“We got ‘im though,” Carmen said, rising from her bedroll and stepping forward.
“A… A Dwarf?” the man asked. “This far west?”
“Like I said,” Nova continued, drawing the man’s attention back to him instead of the four-foot-tall creature beside him. “We were attacked and our mount was killed. Is there any way you can help us?”
“Of course. It’d be wrong to leave the two of you all by yourself.”
“Thank you,” Carmen said, turning to return to their camp.
After crossing his arms over his chest and examining what little of the man’s face he could see in the light ebbing from the fire, Nova took a deep breath and turned his attention to the inside of the carriage. While he could see nothing, save for the faint outline of what were obviously curtains, he imagined there had to be at least one or two people inside, if only by purpose. Coachmen knew better than to travel alone, especially in this day and age.
“How many of you are there?” Nova decided to ask.
“Just myself and two other gentlemen—armed, of course.”
“Of course,” he smiled. “Is there any room in the cart you’re carrying?”
“Possibly, yes. I hope that doesn’t bother you.”
“It doesn’t.”
“You’ll have to lift me up!” Carmen cried, her voice cracking the silence of the cold night like a whip.
“That won’t be a problem,” the coachman said. “Say… the two of you wouldn’t happen to be coming from Dwaydor, would you?”
“Yes. We are.”
“Soldiers! By the Gods, you’re more than welcome to come with us, especially in light of the recent circumstances.” The man paused. He tightened his hold on the reins loud enough for his knuckles to pop, then raised his eyes to look at Carmen, who currently kneeled in front of the fire gathering up their things. “The war wouldn’t happen to be over, would it?”
“I can’t say, sir. Our general took most of the forces and is currently attempting to drive them back to Denyon.”
“Such a horrid thing, that place.”
“What about you? Where are you coming from?”
“One of the outposts in the forests east of here. Liar’s Forest, that place. You’ve had to have heard of it before?”
Of course. How could he have forgotten such a notorious place?
Maybe because you’ve had so much other shit on your mind.
Rather than say anything for fear of betraying his conscience, Nova turned, looked to the campsite, then to the cart arranged behind the carriage, filled with what appeared to be straw and boxes of supplies.
“Gather your things,” the cabby said, drawing Nova’s eyes back toward him. “I’ll wait as long as you need. We’re in no rush to get anywhere.”
With a short nod, Nova turned and started for the camp, but stopped before he could fully get there. “Sir,” he said.
“Yes?” the man replied.
“Thank you. You don’t know how much it means to know that I’m finally going home.”
“I can imagine, sir,” the cabby said. “I can only imagine.”
Chapter 4
Odin stood before the Whooping Hills like a child awaiting the grandest adventure of his life. Breath caught in his throat, heart a low, continuous thud in his chest, he reached down to make sure his swords were at his side and somehow resisted the urge to push the horse into a trot, regardless of the situation and what obstacles they currently faced.
You’re here, he thought, training his eyes on the distant curve of the hill which seemed to tower above all else. Now what do you do?
In truth, there was only one thing he could do—go forward, toward the very place he was seemingly destined to go. The notion, though calm and fragile, was enough to instill the belief that he could turn back, go home, and, eventually, return to Ornala and serve the king. Somehow, though, he was able to keep those thoughts away by pushing them into the darkened recesses of his mind, thus eliminating them from his purpose at hand.
He co
uld do this. He knew he could. To think otherwise was to deny himself outrageous courage that he had so desperately earned, for he had traveled such hellacious hill country before, had wandered down hills so blatant and rough that most ordinary men would have found themselves quaking in their boots. It would be no different than travelling through and along Bohren.
Of course it won’t.
Of course, were he to have been honest with himself, he would have said yes, that this was much different than going to Bohren. At least in Ornala the hills were not as large, as daunting and pockmarked with caves, nor were those hills steep and rounded like dough ready to be baked into bread. Here, at the foot of the Whooping Hills, he felt as though his upper body would slide into his stomach and force everything out the opposite end, such was the nature of the incline they stood upon and the quest it would take to make it to the very top.
“Now you’re getting yourself worked up,” he mumbled, shaking his head and reaching down to tangle his fingers in the horse’s mane. “Everything’s going to be fine, Odin. Just keep telling yourself that.”
At this junction in his quest, there was no point in turning into a pessimist, at least not here.
With a slow, drawn-out shake of his head, Odin whipped the reins forward and sighed when the horse began its slow but stable trek up the hill.
After the first few steps were taken, he could feel the force of gravity pulling him back to the flatter earth.
The horse grunted.
Odin grimaced, expecting to either fall or be forced off.
Somehow, the beast continued forward without another word of protest, thus eliminating the urge for such incessant worry.
“Good boy,” he whispered, stroking the creature’s neck as it kept its slow but steady pace. “You’re doing just fine. Once we get to the top of this hill, you’ll have a nice plain of warm, green grass to eat. What do you think of that?”
Though the horse didn’t reply, the idea was enough to console his mind.
He hated pushing this animal to the brink of its limits.
Closing his eyes, he tilted his head back and bared his neck to the air.