by Kaleb Schad
“I was at the wall at Ove,” Jaren said. “Once was enough for me.”
They looked at each other for a short moment before Daveon felt the need to examine his fingers, scrape dried mud out from under a nail, pick a bur from Syla’s mane. Look anywhere but Jaren’s eyes.
“If that wall’s moving,” Winson said and let the thought trail off, the weight of the implications suffocating it.
“You all need to be moving by midday,” Daveon said. He nudged Syla forward, turning her to head south again.
“You look a bit worse for wear,” Jaren said. “Come on inside and Carolynne can help clean you up, maybe mend those britches.”
Daveon pulled back on Syla and turned again. It would be good to get cleaned up, wash out this cut on his leg. He’d seen soldiers back in the hospital tents after Lindisfarne, the way a wound could fester if it weren’t tended to soon enough. And it weren’t a lie that both his ass and horses were tired.
“Yeah,” said the younger son. “You could tell us what it was like at Lindisfarne. Tell us how to fight the Wretched if we do see them.”
That was all the urging he needed to go.
“I best be moving on,” Daveon said. “Got to reach the Skets and get back to my family.”
“What if they ain’t there?” Jaren said.
Daveon hadn’t ever thought of that. A black hole opened itself in his belly. What if they fled already? Took his horses with them? What if the wall had already reached them and the horses were dead? What then?
His hands shook holding the reins and he couldn’t tell if it was exhaustion or worry. Did it matter?
“Gotta’ say, it’s mighty right that the hero of Lindisfarne would be so brave as to come on down and warn us common folk of the threat,” Jaren said. “I was a hair’s breadth from agreeing with Winson’s plan there for a second. Can you imagine my embarrassment if I’d shown up in Knowles with one of the heroes of Lindisfarne tied to a donkey?” He chuckled and scratched deep in his beard.
“Well…” Daveon said.
“You be careful,” Jaren said.
“You too.”
He rode south, letting the Evenson farm fall away behind him and he prayed like he’d never prayed before that the Skets were still alive with his horses at the ranch.
And that he’d earn a legend bright enough to outshine Lindisfarne.
“It should be only a couple hours ride from here,” Isabell said. She took a swig of warm water, swished it around, then spit. She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. “We can be there by this afternoon.”
They stood outside of the hut and she had her horse saddled and her bags tied. Her hair still had a bit of the morning muss from waking, but her eyes were sharp, bright. Her cheeks and lips red in the cool morning. Anaz was trying not to look at her. Honest, he was.
“I can’t,” he said.
“Domino can carry two.”
She probably thought he was scared. Aren’t I, though?
“Your father is worried about you, I’m certain. Go home. You don’t need to do this.”
“They’re out there, Anaz. The Airim’s Lances. I have to find them. You don’t…I’ve come too far.”
“And what if this wall of dead is moving?” Anaz said. “What if it’s closer than you think?”
“You saw yesterday. I’ll do what I have to. Nothing will keep me from this. I can take care of you, if it comes to that. You wouldn’t be in any danger.”
“I can’t get involved. I’m sorry.”
“You’re afraid.” The way she said it, the disgust slapped him.
“Yes,” he said. “But not of this wall.”
He felt his own anger gurgling up. She had never suffered. This girl was to lecture him? After what she’d done to him yesterday? Forced him to do?
She had never loved with her entire being and then watched as it was murdered before her own eyes. Murdered because of her. To care, to love, to try and hold, these were the things that opened a person to misery. She chased misery when she chased this wall, these dreams, but how could he tell her? How could he help her to understand that the best thing she could do was to allow what would happen to Fisher Pass to happen. How could he reveal the false illusion of control?
Isabell climbed atop Domino and looked down at Anaz. The sun haloed her hair, a rim of gold blazing around her.
“I just want my money, please,” he said. He had to look at his feet. Couldn’t bear her eyes. “I can’t miss Clover Hollow’s Market Days.”
“Sunell said she liked you,” she said. “At the market, when she pointed you out to me. She said you’d been funny and kind to her and that she hoped you were staying in Fisher Pass. That you would be good for the village. She has an uncommon way of seeing into the heart of people. It’s why I brought her on as page.”
Her voice trembled. She tossed the sack of coins to Anaz.
“She’ll be sorry to know how wrong she was about you.”
She turned Domino and put her heels to her flank.
30
The sun was heavy in the west when Daveon finally saw the Monsole ranch. He’d spent the last four hours desperate to stay upright in his saddle. Syla was starting to stumble, dragging her hoofs a little too low. He leaned forward and patted Syla on the neck. “Look at that, girl,” he said. Her ears swiveled back towards him, then forward, but was otherwise unimpressed.
Taness Monsole lived out here alone, Daveon knew. His was one of the gut wrenching stories of the Rot, a story of total loss. Seven children and a wife. Daveon doubted there was enough grief in the world to fill that chasm.
They had only met once, many years back at Market Days when they were both quite a bit younger, before families. Monsole had bought a couple horses from them. They’d also crossed swords in the farmer’s tourney, had a good go at each other. Daveon had won, if he remembered right. He hoped Taness wouldn’t.
While Daveon knew it had been a long time, he didn’t recognize the man walking down the trail to meet him. If it was Taness, he’d hit a hard trail these last years. The old Taness had shaved his chin whiskers and kept himself trim. This man had years’ growth dangling from his chin and hollow eyes. Shoulders rounded and slouched. They squared slightly as he looked up at Daveon, but without any true conviction.
“Rider well met,” Taness said. He had a long knife at his waist.
“Well met, Monsole,” Daveon said.
Taness squinted and the sun cut into his eyes. “I recognize a man’s face of a boy I met? Therentell?”
“Daveon,” Daveon said. “You bought horses from my pa five or six years back.”
“I still have the roan. Betsel. Best damned horse I’ve ever put bridle to.” He looked at Syla and then at Red and the cut saddle bags and the muddy hocks and at the blood stain down Daveon’s leg.
“You don’t look like you’ve come to sell another.”
“I’m sorry to get right to it and all, but this news waits for no niceties.”
“Out with it then.”
“King’s messenger came by Fisher Pass. The wall. She’s moving.”
The man reached up and scratched at his beard, finding something snuggled inside of it and picked it out between two fingers, sniffed it, then flicked it off down the trail. Whatever reaction Daveon had been expecting, that wasn’t it.
“That right,” he said.
“Gave it a week, maybe two to reach Fisher Pass. Means may only be a day or two out from here. Sorry to say, but you’re gonna’ have to pack what you can’t leave and hightail it on out.”
Taness looked at Daveon for a long time.
“Come on inside,” Taness said. “We can swap news over a bite, though my side o’ the swap may leave something to be desired.”
Daveon could almost smell the chimney smoke and whatever food Taness had cooking on it. He hadn’t warmed yet from spending the night without a fire, though he couldn’t tell if his shakes were from being cold or hungry.
“I really oug
htn’ to be getting to the Skets. I’d hoped to reach them yet before nightfall,” Daveon said.
“Barlin?”
“The same.”
“Ain’t but three, four hours ride. Been riding the night?”
“Better part of it.” Or all of it.
“Horses look hoofed out.”
Syla’s neck craned, desperately trying to hold her head’s weight. She looked about how Daveon felt.
Taness glanced at Daveon’s cut leg again and said, “Your trail to blaze, but I suspect the sun’ll wait for a half hour of warm food for you.”
Daveon swallowed. Bread hadn’t touched the pit in his stomach. “Well,” he said and he looked at the sun and then at the house, “for the horses.”
The gravestones stood bright and fierce. A wooden fence encircled the family graveyard, three dull grey and orange mossy stones marking Taness’s parents and a brother. Eight white stones marking his wife and children. Daveon tried not to think about what that would do to a man as he passed. They didn’t speak. Taness didn’t look at them.
Seven children over five years. How does the world ever tilt straight after something like that? Which would be the hardest? The first? The last? Would you despair sooner when your last hope in life lay coughing, his skin boiling and sloughing off in sheafs? Or would the horror of it all happening to your firstborn tear out everything a man can feel and leave only a walking husk behind?
There would come a point, Daveon supposed, when the very act of breathing would feel like a betrayal.
“You came all the way from Fisher Pass for this?” Taness asked.
After getting fodder for the horses and brushing them down, Daveon and Taness sat at his table. Taness had made a half-hearted effort to wash out a wooden bowl that looked to have two weeks worth of food crusted into it, then filled it with a slop of vegetables and lard that had been simmering over the fire. It seemed to Daveon like the best thing he’d eaten in his entire life.
“Someone needed to,” Daveon said. “It didn’t seem like anyone else was and I couldn’t stand by and let something happen to you folks for lack of warning. Not sure I could live with myself.”
Taness didn’t look up from his bowl.
“On to the Skets, then?”
“I mean to.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah.”
“Barlin has four girls.”
“And four boys. And two of my horses.”
“The wall, eh?”
“Yeah.”
When Taness did look at him, he didn’t raise his head and his eyes disappeared into inky pools. “Suspect you’ll be sore on this,” he said, “but I can’t leave.”
Daveon was sure he hadn’t heard him.
“I’m sorry?”
“You saw them out there.”
0 confusion must have shown.
“My family. The graveyard.”
“I did. I’m sorry to hear the Rot hurt you the way it did.”
“I’m not leaving them to the Wretched, Therentell.”
“But…”
“You look to have suffered for kindness and I can’t say I don’t appreciate it. It’s been a long time since—” Taness broke off and looked past Daveon towards the sleeping room and the loft above it. The corners of his mouth twitched. “I can’t say I don’t appreciate it, but this is where my family is. I reckon I need to stay here with them.”
“But the wall is coming.” Daveon felt like an idiot repeating himself, but the idea that Taness was going to stay and face the wall was so absurd, he felt certain Taness must not understand him.
“So you’ve said and I wouldn’t be one to call you a liar.”
“You’ll die if you stay,” Daveon said.
“I reckon.”
Daveon couldn’t find the words. Never once, had it crossed his mind that someone might stay, might choose to face the wall. A concoction of frustration and fear stewed inside Daveon. He’d ridden all this way, gone out of his way to reach Taness just so the man would survive. He could have been to the Skets by now, could have saved that family and had his horses if he’d known Monsole was going to just throw his life away.
No. By the gods, Daveon wasn’t going to let that happen.
“You have to leave,” he said. “I’m sorry for your family, I truly am, but I can’t let you stay here and feed them when they come.”
“I’ll do my best to make sure they lose their appetite ‘fore they get me.”
“Taness, this is insane. You’re young. Ventner’s lands, they say the soil up there is so rich you end up throwing out half your yield because you produce so much.”
“You saw the fields. Ain’t farmed much more’n I need to eat the last couple seasons.”
“You could remarry. Start again. Find a woman and get some little ones at your knees again—”
“You’ll kindly shut the fuck up, Therentell,” Taness cut in.
Daveon’s ears rang as if he’d been slapped. Him shut the fuck up? He was the one who was out of line by trying to save this grizzled old bastard’s life? His wife and kids were at home alone at this very moment, maybe fighting for their own lives and he, Daveon Therentell, the man who’d come all this way to save his neighbors’ lives, needed to shut the fuck up? His breathing quickened, could feel his legs bouncing.
“I could make you,” he whispered.
Taness locked eyes with him. “That was a long time ago, Therentell. We ain’t the same boys that were in that tourney all those years back. I’m staying here.”
Daveon was out of his chair before he knew what he was doing. He scrambled around the table, his sliced leg flaring hot, and he wrapped an arm around Taness’s neck. He hauled the old man from his chair.
“What—” Taness said.
“Get up.”
“You—” Taness gripped Daveon’s forearm. “Out of your mind.”
“That wall is coming,” Daveon said. “You are not staying here.”
The chair legs cracked, then split, and Taness fell to the floor. Daveon stumbled forward and lost his grip around Taness’s neck and braced himself against the table to keep from tumbling. The dishes of vegetable soup slid off the surface, vomiting their contents across the floor.
Taness jumped to his feet. Faced Daveon.
“Now stop—”
Daveon buried his shoulder into the man’s gut. Backwards. Someone’s foot smashed into the table, shoving it towards the hearth. What dishes hadn’t fallen the first time tumbled across the room now.
Taness shoved Daveon’s head down while shimmying his legs out of Daveon’s grip. They broke and stood.
“No!” Daveon screamed at him. “All this way! Leaving everyone to the gods know what. And Nikolai hurt and Alysha! Airim be damned if you think I’m leaving you here!”
He charged Taness again.
Taness planted his fist square in Daveon’s jaw, a thwack sound that Daveon felt rather than heard, the ripple riding through his teeth and into his skull.
Whiteness.
Earth on his cheek.
Daveon blinked.
He was laying down. Someone was sitting on his back. Stewed carrots and onion under his nose.
Taness was breathing heavy when he said, “That there is enough.”
Daveon gave a small nod.
“I’m going to get off you now. You ain’t going to twist crazy on me again are you?”
Daveon shook his head.
The pressure lifted from his back and Daveon looked at Taness. He pulled his legs under him, then sat up and slid back against the wall of the hut. Taness sat down next to him. They both scanned the carnage.
Without any hint it was coming, Daveon found himself sobbing. It wasn’t even an option not to. Wracking, shaking sobs.
“I’m sorry,” Daveon said. “I’m sorry.”
“Well,” Taness said. His voice was a rolled edge, any ghost of anger long given up. “It’s about how I’ve felt about life myself.”
“I jus
t…you still have your own life, could start again. I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to hear that, but you could, Taness.”
“You married?”
“I am.”
“Kids?”
“Boys. Eight and four.”
“You’re going to learn something, Therentell. I’m a little shocked you haven’t yet, but love, it ain’t like that. A woman, a child, they put a brand on a man’s heart. Right there. Burned into the flesh and it ain’t never coming off. You got it. You act like you ain’t, but you do. You do.” Taness reached across and tapped Daveon twice on the chest. “Right here.”
Daveon wiped at his tears.
Taness leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes, let out a deep sigh. “Sure, I could find another woman maybe, if one would have me, but that burning brand in my chest, it wouldn’t be going nowhere. Every beat, it would just keep on burning only now I’d feel like I’s cheating on Lydia to boot and that ain’t something I ever did or aim to start now.”
Daveon stared at his hands. The spot on his sternum where Taness had tapped him still burned.
“No,” Taness said. “I think if them bastards are coming to kill me, well, I guess that’s one way to stop the burn.”
Daveon leaned out of the saddle and took the satchel from Taness. The slice on his leg had reopened during the scuffle and it screamed now at the weight in the stirrup.
“I put some dried beef and cheese in there for you. And a little whiskey,” Taness said. “It helps.”
He looked out at the blood red sun and the blood red clouds and the seeping ruin spreading across the horizon and Daveon thought maybe he wouldn’t speak again, but then Taness said, “It’d be a kindness I don’t deserve if you didn’t tell anyone I stayed. Maybe I was already gone when you got here.”
He didn’t look at Daveon. He reached up and scratched Syla between the ears and under her jowl.
“I would hate to have people think I gave up.”
31
Mud squished up around Anaz’s feet, a slimy grit scraping between his toes, and the stream pressed its icy insistence into his shins. Three years he had fished out of this creek—it was why he’d built his cabin here in the first place—and yet every time he stood in it like this, he wondered at the marvel of running water. Liquid crystals.