by Anton Le Roy
“Time indeed,” she thoughtfully agrees. Then, “I thought it was too much a coincidence you arrive out of the blue when he’s in town.”
“For me, it’s more of a coincidence that you’re here too.” Of all the places she could be and this is where she is: the place where I finally find Satipo. What are the chances of that?
She moves her hands away from my chest and the heat quickly dissipates, suddenly leaving me tired and in need of sleep. “There, that’ll do for now. Your body needs to rest from the intense healing. Before you do, there’s something else I need to mention. Something I’ve… noticed about you. Something… surprising…”
I fight drooping eyes and joke, “Surprising in a good way?”
Her response is blunt. “No.” Then, “We’ll, I don’t think so anyway.”
Ah, okay, what now?
“There’s a shroud around you,” she states quite plainly. “The dead, they cling to you like barnacles!” Well I wasn’t expecting her to come out with that! She suddenly stares wide eyed beyond me and her crow caws in agitation. A chill settles upon my spine. She’s using her sight, her third eye, as it were. “They were clear to me when you were on the brink of death. So many of them… hundreds and hundreds… no, thousands! Like a great herd, new and old… their faces shrouded behind a veil, only their eyes blazing bright.” She slowly waves a hand before her face and the light in the room fades down low. “They still linger. I can almost part the veil… almost… no… no, they’re too hidden for me to see properly.”
Suddenly I feel much more awake. I dare not look behind, too afraid of what I might see again. I’ve always found it easy to be honest with her, unlike with other people, even Gregor, and I feel guilty opening up to her when I should have with him. “For ages now I’ve had ghosts of my past that I cannot get rid of and then ever since I started looking for Satipo… something changed... I think those spirits are real.”
Her eyes snap back into focus upon me. “I think so too.”
“How is that possible?”
She slouches back in her chair, crosses her legs and lazily hangs an arm over the back rest. “Maybe they always were real and now we’re finally seeing them for what they are.”
Her stare upon me is intense. Did she really not see their faces? Does she suspect who some of them might be? Some of them were her friends too.
“Not all of the dead are here though, some people I knew are missing.” Like Fussby, for instance.
“Maybe those aren’t lost souls. Maybe they didn’t feel the need to follow.”
Makes sense. “Also, the spooks aren’t just faces of my past. There’s others. Completely unknown to me.”
She ponders on this for a moment. “Drawn to you in passing. They see the other phantoms you carry and they follow like sheep. You’re a lighthouse in their world of limbo.”
I frown at that thought. Well at least not all of the dead Six plus all the dead from the enemy armies we defeated haunt me because then I’d be drowning in a sea of phantasms! “Wish they would just leave me alone.”
She makes a face at that. “It may be too late for that now. The door is already open.”
I have nothing more to add.
“And what of the Coyote?” she asks.
I blink in surprise. “You see that mangy old thing too?”
A fiery frown. “Did you think I was just some hokey old witch spinning tales?”
I laugh at that, which ends up in a little coughing fit. She gives me some water and I down the lot. Then, “No I didn’t think that, just hoped the thing wasn’t real either.”
“Well it is and I see it, in all its glory. Is it friend or foe?”
I shrug. “I killed its master.”
A reaction of mild surprise. “Must have been some master!”
“Could say that.”
“It has plans for you.”
“Great.” I turn around half expecting to find it sitting there with a horde of spectres. Nope. Nothing. “I’ve had my fair share of things out to get me.”
“And still you survive,” she sarcastically drawls.
I give her my best smile. “It’s what I do best.”
“Hmm. So, where’s Gregor?” Wetlock asks, “Did you piss him off too?”
I succinctly tell her everything that’s happened, everything from the day we went hunting for Loktie, there’s no need to be secretive about it. Her eyes glisten when I tell her about Gregor and for the first time today her tough exterior breaks and she’s once more that frightened young girl cradled in my youthful arms as we lay naked together. There’s an urge in me to comfort her, to hug her tight once more, yet I dare not do it. Funny, you don’t realise how much you miss something sometimes, don’t realise until you finally understand you can never have it back again.
Memories of that day I departed come to mind. “I’m finally alone,” I say, “Just like you said I’d be when last we spoke.”
It hadn’t been a pleasant conversation.
She wipes her reddened eyes and stares intently at me for a while. What is she remembering? The good times, or the bad? “You should sleep. I want you on your feet by tomorrow.”
And then she’s leaving the room and my eyes are closing in exhaustion. Nope, you can never go back once the damage is done.
Half naked I lean heavily against the wall, squinting through the cracks in the window shutters. It’s the next day and even though my body still aches like crap and I’m stiff and weak, I’m alive and getting stronger by the minute, much faster if I wasn’t benefiting from her special healing skills. Without it, apart from being dead, I’d probably by laid up for months. Wetlock has worked a miracle on me considering the state I was in. Her abilities far exceed what I thought possible although I’m slightly surprised why she even bothered. Her anger at me is in plain sight. She wears it like a cloak.
Outside, the mountains are still towering over us in one direction, seemingly close enough that you could prick a finger on any of the peaks. I turn my attention to Broken Naile. Seems like an average little town out there, one adapted to life on these cold plains and even though we’re situated on the edge of town I can see that it’s bustling with life, the main street still full of people milling around market stalls in the afternoon sun, which fights a losing battle to burn the shadows with golden light.
Satipo is here! He’s here! I’ll take down as many of those Newborn as I can before we can finally have our chat. Hopefully I can finish off that murderous shit Vim too. If Satipo wants to be my friend, then that’s fine, and if he wants to kill me, then… I’m fine with that too. Even though Wetlock has almost fixed the wounds she cannot fix the tiredness within me. I’m tired of running, of fighting, of watching people I care about die. Tired of the unhappiness and regrets all piling up like layers of silt and hardening into sedimentary rock too thick to break. Maybe my death can achieve something positive.
My attention is drawn to a couple of roguish men outside, arrogantly pushing their way past a few townspeople, both wearing partially grey outfits with grey cowls. I know there’s a white symbol of the Newborn somewhere on them. One of them stops at a stall and picks up a couple of sweet buns and handing one to his comrade they walk on without paying. The stall owner angrily reacts and then, pausing as if realising who they are, does nothing to stop them. I couldn’t ask for better proof that they’re in town.
“Good, you’re on your feet,” Wetlock says, appearing behind me and making me jump in the process. She smirks slightly at my reaction.
I breathe a sigh of relief that she wasn’t a surprise attack from a gang of Newborn. “Could’ve given me a damn heart attack!” What a bitch of a way to go right now!
“And all my hard work gone to waste. Especially when you’re making such good progress.”
Aye, I am, although I want to heal faster in order to continue with the quest. “What you’ve done is amazing,” I point out.
She shrugs as if that’s an irrelevant point. “It’s taken lon
ger than I had hoped because the toxins in your body have slowed things down. There was also a large dosage of something else. You know you shouldn’t use that much Redleaf.” As I shrug off her comment she puts a pile of things onto the wooden floor by the bed. “Anyway, here you are; your kit.”
And not just that, the weapons have been cleaned and oiled and my clothes washed and tidied up too. I find myself grinning at her like an idiot.
“Tomorrow,” she says, “You’ll be ok to travel, if you must. I’m not sure about anything more strenuous than that though.” We’ll see about that, I guess. “For now, sit down, I want to check you over.”
I nod and think of something to talk about that doesn’t involve the past. “Tell me more about this Reeve and the Newborn.”
The subject seems to grate on her because her voice hardens and her eyes blaze with impotent rage. “Well, you could say the Reeve runs the town. Unofficially through fear and violence and anyone that stood up to his appointment, and anyone that still falls out of line actually, they beat or torture. Or worse. The people live in fear of his tyranny and no one in power from the nearest city seems bothered about doing anything about it. He’s simply a figurehead for the Newborn though, someone to lord over the town while they get up to whatever it is they do.”
Hands on my skin as the wounds are checked and then her hands hold still and heat radiates from them as the blessed healing magic returns.
She continues, “The Reeve was already a butcher and rapist and his crew that patrol the streets are a bunch of murderous crooks too. The others that I would consider the more refined Newborn remain holed up in an old fort in the centre of town. Those ones, including Satipo, mainly keep to themselves and I can sense quite a lot of magic being used in there. With members always coming and going it’s hard to keep a tally on their numbers. I’d guess at, say, over thirty Newborn, plus Satipo and the Reeve.”
With the Reeve and his men acting as the Newborn muscle I’ll have to go through them first and I’ll do that gladly.
She leans closer and I lose my train of thought. By the gods, she smells good!
I suddenly say, “I’m sorry.”
“What for?” she asks, genuinely confused.
“For leaving. Not returning. Not keeping in touch. Everything.”
A pause and then a dismissive gesture and a wry smile. “Look, you are who you are. I learned that a long time ago.”
“Well, I was an idiot.”
She chuckles. “Finally you realise that! Seems like you’re getting wise in your older years.” She chuckles some more although her eyes are sad.
I feel it too.
We’d met so young, not long after me and Gregor became friends and not long after I first knew Satipo. I’d finally become old enough to be accepted into the army that I’d lived with and followed across half a continent. Every one of those soldiers, cooks, medics, merchants, entertainers: they were all family to me. Me and Gregor enrolling together, meeting people who would be entwined within our lives forever. People like Satipo, the beginnings of the Red Dogs.
Then she appeared, the daughter of a legendary general, and for the first time all that I’d wanted, all that I’d worked for, was turned on its head. She was the one thing I yearned for and in the end, sometime after that fateful day the Six fell, she was the thing I threw away. What I’d give to go back in time, to be that wide eyed hopeful with heaps of youth and vibrancy. What I’d give to have a second chance. Would probably make all the same mistakes again! Would probably still be sitting in this room, half dead and musing over the past like an old codger. Sitting so close and yet so far apart from the true love of my life.
She finishes checking my battered body. “You’re recuperating well. You need to continue to rest and not overdo things just yet, or you could make yourself ill again.”
“Then I’d best be a good boy and not strain myself,” I smirk.
A glimmer of humour in her features. Then, “There’s someone here who would like to see you, downstairs. He helped me prepare your kit.”
“Who?”
“Just an old friend of yours. Why don’t you go see?”
Chapter 21
Each step is like stepping down from a mountaintop, stretching my muscles to the extreme, with one hand firmly on the banister from which Hugimun, the crow, watches like a sentry. Better not be in this weakened condition for too long, need to be back to normal by tomorrow night. I have plans for then.
The building is three storeys high, plus an attic. It’s a sizeable home. If Wetlock has the run of the first and second floors who has the ground floor? There’s one person who seems to fit and when I finally reach the bottom of the stairs, take a breather against the railings and then fully open the door left ajar, my suspicions are confirmed.
A very elderly man sits by the window in a soft chair with his back to me. As if the fiery orb hangs just outside, sunlight bleeds through the half open shutters in a blinding flare, eager to consume all in its holy glow.
“Veteran!” declares General Daida as he turns to face me with a grin, “By the gods, you look old!”
He’s right, but still… “You’re one to talk, Sir!”
“Sir… haha, you do know I’ve not been your superior for quite some time now, boy.”
Hard to shift old habits.
General Daida. Can’t believe just how decrepit he is now! Once a great warrior, a man feared and respected, a leader in charge of tens of thousands of soldiers at a time, a man who helped shape the Army of the Six, agreed the formation of the Red Dogs, who put his life on the line to save his soldiers when the Six was shattered. A man who scared me shitless at times when I was secretly sleeping with his daughter, Wetlock. Now look at him. Is it better to die in battle or become like this? A frail old man with all his strengths stripped from him? Wisps of hair on his head. Liver spots decorating the bag of skin surrounding the protruding skeleton. Eyes set deep into his drawn face. Damn it, this is a thing of nightmares! Poor Daida! How could fate be this cruel?
He laughs, followed by a hacking fit that brings a frail hand to his mouth. The fist is still large and I remember the broadsword held firmly within. That same broadsword lies across his lap now, hiding within the richly decorated scabbard and looking far too big for him now. As a younger man he swung it as if it were made of reed.
Knowing eyes bore into mine. “Look at me, Vet. I’m dying.”
No shit. “I’m sorry… can’t Wetlock…?”
“No,” he replies, his voice still strong and sure. “Oh, she’s tried, bless her. You see, I have a cancer that cannot be cured. Ha, never did I think there’d be any enemy to defeat me and yet it was always within me. Lurking. Waiting to pounce like a patient assassin.”
I can understand how crap that must be to deal with. As a way of not having to talk about how one of my old mentors is going to die I decide to change the subject. “Sir, why are you out here?”
“In this little town and not in my big villa back home? Being lavished by servants and whores? Because I want my final days to be with her. My beautiful daughter.”
With a sigh I sit on his bed, staring at his sword. Better than looking at him.
He speaks. “I heard your old pal is in town and how he tried to have you killed.”
“Aye. Satipo is alive. I’m going to go to him. We’ll have a chat and whatever happens will happen.”
“Satipo was always a loose cannon but I couldn’t ever have imagined what he’s now become. You know he’s shacked up with the Reeve, that nasty little shit.” Inspecting eyes. “And still you’re going into that vipers nest, eh? There’s too many for you, boy. Maybe in your younger days… Maybe if Gregor was still here…”
Maybe if you weren’t ill too? He’s desperate to join me in my mission, to end his life with dignity. Poor guy can barely walk though, let alone swing a blade. “I’m not afraid of dying, Sir.”
Daida almost growls at that. “And you’re proud of that fact? Is death what you r
eally want? So you don’t end up like this?” A frail hand thumps against a weak chest at that word and it causes him to start coughing a little.
I watch him, waiting for him to get over it and then I provide a shrug.
A steely resolve sets on his face and there is a strength behind his eyes at odds with his weakened body. “Don’t let the past destroy you, boy. You still have the chance for a long and normal life. There is another way, you know there is,” he says. “My daughter.”
“It’s too late for the two of us, Sir, even if she wanted me back.”
“Bah! She’s always loved you, boy. You just need to give her time.” I’m not sure about that, Daida. He gives me a sly grin, “The first time round, when you were chasing her, I may have not liked it one little bit. Things are different now, so don’t keep making the same mistakes. Change things before it’s too late.”
A hand on his and I squeeze. It’s like holding a silk purse filled with loose bones and I’m scared of hurting him. “Sometimes love isn’t enough. I have to see Satipo. I have to put the past to rest once and for all.” And that means accepting the consequences. “Goodbye, old friend.”
Daida sighs with disappointment and gives me a nod.
Going to leave the room I pause to the sound of a sword slipping from its scabbard. The bare blade rests on top, shining magically in the daylight. It’s a tragic sight. The weapon wants to sing once more with its master and the master is willing but unable.
He strokes it affectionately with a shaking hand and says, “She has my old bow and a sheaf of arrows. Take them. The bow is a fine weapon. There are usually only four sentries on the walls at dusk.” Cold eyes turn to regard me and I can see the shadow of the great man he once was. “I would die with you if I could, boy.”