by David Estes
He was still searching when a sound made him freeze, goosepimples rising on the back of his neck.
The hounds were back.
He dragged on his half-dry pants and shoved his feet into his boots, scooping up his socks, undergarments and shirt, tucking them under one arm. And then he ran. He didn’t return to the water, fearing the hounds would catch up as they ran along the embankment.
At first he stuck to the water’s edge, but the barks grew louder, closer, and he knew he would be caught.
Do they have my scent or are they seeking it? If they were on the western side, then they had picked up his trail and the only option was to dive back into the water. But if they were on the eastern side…
Relying on nothing but instinct, he made a decision, departing from the river and tiptoeing back into the forest, careful not to step on leaf or branch. The dogs had other ways of finding him than their noses. When he was a fair distance from the stream but still within sight, he stopped and crouched behind the trunk of a large tree. He wrapped his shirt around his shoulders and torso like a shawl, and peeked out.
For a while all he heard were the dogs, but then—
A voice, barely audible over the hounds.
“This is pointless. He’s gone.” Mortis slid fully behind the tree when the speaker came into view, but not before he caught a glimpse. There were five, maybe six, hounds tethered together, their leashes connected to a longer rope, which was gripped by the first man. From a distance, it was hard to make out any details, but it was clear he wore light armor but no helmet.
A response from another man. “Farley ’ill have our hides if we return emptyhanded.”
Mortis’s heart beat steadily in his chest, ignoring the urge to look again. They don’t have my trail, he thought. Which meant they were still on the opposite side. But if they called off the search now and crossed back over the river…
The dogs would find him in short order. His heart began to race, his mind churning through his chances, which were slim.
More grumbling from the first.
“Shut yer yappin’,” the second man said.
Mortis chanced another look, spotting both men between the trees as they moved further along the opposite edge of the river. There were no others. Only two, he thought. I could kill them.
A laugh almost slipped from his lips but he clamped them tight together. Yes, he had killed a man for the first time the night before, but that didn’t make him a killer. He was weaponless and outnumbered and the fires that had stoked his prior actions had long faded into the shadows of his heart.
Plus, they had the dogs, which would rip him to shreds. No, fighting would be a last resort.
Eventually the first man will win the argument. They will cross over. They will take the path of least resistance, heading back downstream. They will pick up my scent.
There was nothing for it. As soon as the sounds of the hounds vanished again, he slipped through the forest and into the water. This time, however, he held his clothes and boots above his head, saving him from another frigid, sleepless night.
Mortis never saw his pursuers again, and after three more days in the forest he finally admitted to himself that he was safe.
It was a feeling that held mixed emotions for him. Because he had failed to keep her safe. Because he wasn’t sure he deserved safety.
But such feelings were counterproductive, and Mortis managed to place them in an iron box, which he locked and hid to be opened and examined another time. Instead, his focus went to survival. He wasn’t willing to risk a fire yet, so he stuck to foraging, finding several mealy apples and some acorns that were so hard he had to grind them into powder between two stones in order to chew and swallow them.
The days passed in a blur of unsatisfying meals and aching muscles, his feet growing ever more calloused.
And then, one day, he reached the end of the forest, the rolling green hills marching all the way to the sea to the north, and to the great forest known as the Tangle to the east. Connecting the two were the snowcapped Mournful Mountains, the barrier to the north. Somewhere in their shadow lay Bethany, which supposedly bore a population in excess of two-thousand souls now, though more and more colonists were flocking to the village in hopes of finding their fortune. It was said a castle was even being built, and that one of the wealthy Houses of Knight’s End had already won the bidding.
I cannot go there, Mortis thought. I cannot go anywhere.
Except perhaps east. It was this thought, this hope, that helped him put one foot in front of the other, though they felt like heavy stones strapped to his ankles.
He set out across the rolling hills, seeking something he couldn’t yet define.
One week later
Mortis was nestled behind a steep, grassy rise, watching the caravan move slowly across the terrain. There were six wagons in total, all covered, drawn by a mix of hunch-backed horses, lowing cattle, and mules. The latter were pulling the last cart, a pair of gray beasts that seemed to fight every step, requiring the lash of their master’s whip.
Children ran along the edges of the procession, laughing and playing. Women sat with their feet dangling from the backs of the carts, knitting or pressing their hands into bowls—kneading bread dough perhaps. The men drove the horses, cattle, and mules.
Other than the whips, Mortis couldn’t make out any other weapons, though he was certain they would have knives at the least, and perhaps bows for hunting. But there were no swords, and none of them carried the wary look of soldiers. No, these were frontiersmen and women, off to seek a better life for their families. Had they been further south, perhaps they might’ve been on the road to Restor or one of the other traveler villages, but this far north, and with their bearing directly to the east…there was only one possibility.
These people wanted to cross Hyro Lake and find Portage.
Movement caught his attention to the west. His breath caught for a second but then eased out as he realized it was another caravan, slightly larger and longer than the first. Behind that one was another, and another, the wagons stretching as far as the eye could see.
Mortis knew these people. Not personally, but their type. For he was one of them. Dreamers. Freedom-seekers. It was the same mentality that had made him to save enough coin to board a ship across the Crimean Sea. They hated being under the thumb of a lord or lady, and the construction of a castle in Bethany had been enough to drive them from the growing city.
By necessity, Mortis had fallen into the employ of the castle at Knight’s End, but he’d never felt comfortable there. If not for his daily escape into the woods, he wasn’t sure he would’ve lasted as long in the position.
This is where I belong.
The thought struck him hard in the chest, not only because of its trueness, but because of the pain that came along with it. Because of what—who—was missing.
Perhaps he deserved to be alone. But perhaps not.
He stood, crested the hill, and started toward the first caravan.
One month later
Surrounded by people—kind, generous people—Mortis felt as alone as ever.
They’d accepted him without pause, and though he’d felt their eyes appraising his bedraggled condition and the fact that he carried no supplies or luggage other than the clothes on his back, they’d never questioned him for it, lending him their own extra things, which he promised to repay through his labors around camp.
There was Bern, with his quick-to-smile face and litany of japes that always seemed on the tip of his tongue. And his wife, Naomi, with her own shrewd wit and ability to see into his thoughts and feelings with such accuracy it scared him. Their children should’ve brought him joy, Marcus and Violet and Otis, with their excess of energy and requests for rides on his broad shoulders. Five other families traveled with them, too, and they were all in the same category of good people. Rare people, these days at least.
Mortis would smile sometimes, and even let a laugh slip now and
again, but they never reached the core of him the way they used to. The way they always did with Scarlett.
The Tangle had been a pleasant surprise. From a distance, the thick forest had appeared gnarled and impenetrable, but as they entered the shadowy wood the secret paths seemed to make themselves known to the weary travelers, and whenever they required sustenance they would find a bush ripe with sweet berries bursting with juice or a tree dropping crunchy nuts. There was water aplenty as well, both from the diamond-clear streams and the occasional misting rains, which pooled from above in large purple cup-like leaves that grew throughout the wood. They’d even been able to bring their caravans and horses through, something they hadn’t expected.
If Mortis didn’t know better, he’d say the Tangle was magical.
Still, despite all that, Mortis waged a daily battle with the urge to slip away without a goodbye. Because all the goodness he’d experienced since his harried flight through the western woods only reminded him of all the goodness he’d lost. Not the goodness, the bestness. How did one go on when the very best part of them had been stripped away? How did one move forward when their current life felt but a pale shade of their former?
Mortis gritted his teeth and took another step. One foot in front of the other, that was how. Ahead of him, there was a shout from one of the children. It wasn’t an unusual sound, for they shouted about every new discovery, from the colorful four-winged butterflies as large as dinner plates to the holes they found in several of the trees that were like strange looking-glasses into another world, a bleak and desolate place devoid of anything but wind and stone.
But this was a different sound, echoing from not only child to child, but from adult to adult, the excitement palpable in the tone of each cry.
Mortis quickened his pace, because he needed a new distraction, something to take his mind off anything but the great unknown of the future.
Ahead, the wood finally ended.
A lake spread out before them, its surface rippling slightly as a current dragged fallen leaves left to right, downstream, where they would eventually flow into the Spear and, finally, the Burning Sea.
Mortis wondered if he would float that far if he eased himself into the water, dipping his head back into the current, closing his eyes. Could he float forever?
The mirthful cries of splashing and play drew him from his reverie. It wasn’t just the children, but their parents too, plunging into the water clothes and all.
Mortis could hear the baying of hounds, the shouts of pursuit. He could feel his own soaked clothes sucking at his skin as he fought the current. He could remember the exact moment when he noticed his hands were clean again, no longer bloodstained.
“Mortie?” a voice said and he snapped his head to the side, surprised.
“I told you not to call me that,” he said automatically.
Bern chuckled, the corners of his eyes crinkling. Though he wasn’t old old, he bore laugh lines aplenty, even when he wasn’t laughing. His hair was sandy, just the edges tipped with gray. He wore a brown traveling cloak that covered most of his short, rotund form. “Mortis sounds so…stiff.”
It was an old joke, but the perpetually amused man never seemed to tire of it.
Occasionally, Mortis would laugh, but he couldn’t manage it today. Not even a thin smile. Instead he looked back at the water, his eyes tracing a path to the opposite side, where a series of small structures arose. Ant-like forms moved amongst them. People.
Portage, Mortis thought. We made it. There were several wooden docks nestled against the shore, mirrored on this side as well. Boats shoved off from them, ferrying across. More colonists must arrive every day.
“Are you okay?” Bern asked, his own smile fading.
Mortis had told them nothing of his past, only that he was a woodcutter, but not that he’d been in the employ of the castle at Knight’s End. History was dangerous, even amongst friends.
And he had no idea how to answer such a simple question. “I am…trying,” was all he could manage.
Bern nodded, as if he understood the layers behind the vague three-word answer. “Aye. We all are. And that’s what counts, isn’t it?”
Given the man’s propensity for humor, it always surprised Mortis when he turned from mirth to seriousness in the blink of an eye. “Is it?”
There was a twinkle in the man’s dark green eyes. “Honestly? I don’t rightly know!”
Bern did smile this time, genuinely, because he didn’t either. He wondered whether it was true of all humans, even those who appeared confident and untouchable on the outside, men like Lord Farley Loren.
“You’re not going to do anything foolish, are you?” Bern asked now. There was a lightness in his tone that belied the caring the statement implied.
“Like swim with my clothes on?” he said, gesturing to the others.
Bern smirked. “Good point.” He threw his cloak aside and began tugging at his shirt, his pale round belly popping free like a broken button. By the time he was down to his underclothes, he was already stumbling toward the water, leaping into the air and smacking down with a cringeworthy slap that displaced enough water that Mortis feared he would drain the lake.
He tried to laugh. He tried.
Instead, he watched the first of several boats growing closer and closer as they skated across the lake.
One month later
Portage was a place full of challenges, as was any new colony. Providing enough food for the ever-growing population; constructing shelters; digging privies. Mortis threw himself into the work, making the daily voyage across the lake, loading his boat with wood from the Tangle to use for fuel and timber. At first he’d borrowed an axe, a fine tool lent by one of the primary builders for the burgeoning village, but upon seeing Mortis’s level of production, the man had given it to him freely.
Mortis felt the weight of it every day as it hung from his belt.
The memories no longer assaulted him the way they had, but he still awoke soaked in sweat in the middle of the night. Thankfully, he never recalled the nightmares, and he’d learned to control his thoughts.
This is my fresh start, he thought as he hauled the boat toward the lake. No new colonists had arrived for several days, and the surface of the water was so undisturbed it might’ve been the silver span of an enormous mirror, reflecting the fluffy white clouds crossing the bluest sky Mortis had ever seen.
And yet nothing felt right.
He jolted to a stop, unable to breathe, dropping the boat, sinking to his knees, feeling the hard line of his axe digging into his hip.
He gasped and heaved and watched tears drip to the ground, wondering how they’d appeared so quickly, like phantoms emerging from a misty morning.
I can’t live like this, he thought, though it wasn’t a desire to die. No, he was living for her, and that had to mean something. What he meant was something else. That he couldn’t live here, in this new village, with these free-spirited people. Because he didn’t feel the same excitement they felt. His soul felt…aged, like he’d lived a thousand lifetimes in the span of a year.
He knew he had to live another one—but not here.
Mortis pulled the axe from its holster and dropped it in the boat.
He would tell Bern and his family, and the others from the caravan that had brought him this far.
And then he would go.
One month later
There was a reason the colonists from the west hadn’t traveled further east than Portage thus far.
The natives.
When these lands had first been discovered, explorers had pushed toward all corners of it. The north had been found to be a cold and bleak place. Even the original discoverer, Heinrich Gäric, had attempted to explore it, but his expedition had ended in tragedy, as he and most of his men perished on the frozen tundra. His son, Tomas, and several others survived, but refused to tell the tale. To the south, expeditionary forces had been met with significant resistance, and further expans
ion had been deemed impossible, at least for the time being.
The east, however, had been a different story. The westerners had no problems crossing either the lake or the river, finding the east to be a hospitable land with good soil, lush grass, plenty of water, and a temperate climate.
After what had happened in the south, each expedition was protected by a small military force, a mix of infantry, cavalry, and archers. The first such expedition that had attempted to travel from the lake to the eastern shore had not returned. The second achieved the same result. The third, however, had one survivor. The man claimed the natives to the east were witches and wizards, their hair infused with starlight, their eyes made from jewels of many colors, from which they got their power. The rest of their bodies are constructed of iron, he’d said, or at least that was how the rumors and gossip back in Knight’s End had told it.
He’d also claimed they’d let him survive, but he’d been made to promise to deliver a warning: Stop expansion to the east.
There was no threat attached to the statement, but there didn’t need to be. The lost expeditions were threat enough.
For a time—more than a decade—all attempts to explore and colonize the east had ceased. But as often happens, history is forgotten and children become men and women determined to do something more than those who came before them.
A fourth expedition departed for the east, determined to succeed where others had failed. It was a larger force than any of its predecessors, several hundred able-bodied soldiers who had survived skirmishes with the southerners on multiple occasions. They would return with the truth, it was said. None doubted them, least of all themselves.