by Ty Arthur
“The Farwalker blesses those who walk alone in darkness to spread the light.” The quick mantra was on his lips again and again as he ran, knowing a confrontation would lead only to disaster, as he would be unable to call on the Farwalker's light again so soon after unleashing its fury.
The vision of the burning city, normally in place just next to his thoughts, had nearly faded entirely from his mind. Even attempting to focus on it brought an intense, cold pain in his head that paradoxically brought on a sheen of sweat and a round of retching. He quickly abandoned the attempt and rushed ahead faster, knowing the hounds would be on him imminently.
It wasn't long before he saw the telltale sign of a rebel safe house carved into the awning of a dilapidated home. Ignoring his typical caution that had kept the rebellion alive for so long, he burst in without bothering to provide the normal knock indicating a friendly approach. Six conspirators were on their feet immediately with weapons pointed at Erret, on the verge of all striking at once before they realized who had thrown open their door.
Although poorly armed, rounding up whatever work tools and farming equipment could be scavenged and put to use as an implement of death, Erret was pleased to see how ready they'd been against an unexpected assault. They knew their place however, these true sons and daughters of a once-proud city, and relaxed when he stepped from the shadows and threw his arms high, shouting out a litany of praise to the most high god.
He pointed back towards the door and commanded his troops to put that readiness to full use. “Rejoice brothers and sisters! I've struck a blow at the heart of the occupation, and tonight the rebellion enters full bloom!”
11 (Western Ward, Early True Night)
Leaving the edge of the empty Briar, Myrr gestured for his new companion to take the nearest side of the road, staying hugged against the sparse buildings as they returned to a ward that had already seen its share of violence that night. Any knights they came across would no doubt be on edge and prone to swift violence, even if they didn't realize who was skulking through the night.
A thought occurred to him then as he trudged forward, hoping his full faculties would return soon so he might walk on his own. “Before you said someone who had your screams would have been raised with you. There are more then, more who have what we have?”
That pause he was beginning to expect now occurred again, while some struggle went on within, or perhaps some mantra was chanted in her head. He didn't interrupt while Tala went through her ritual, wondering if Casterly had felt the same way towards him in the preceding days.
When she finally spoke she looked up to the only open source of light: the night sky. He couldn't see well enough in the darkness to tell what she was feeling when she finally responded “All of us there were born the night that star first appeared.”
He grabbed hold of her more tightly when they reached the end of the street, craning his neck and listening for sounds of movement as they reached an intersection he'd crossed many times before. They remained silent, waiting, before he nodded for them to move on. She didn't ask where they were going, trusting him for reasons he couldn't fully grasp, although when she resumed speaking he wondered if she was lost in some past reverie and didn't care.
“The caretakers taught us how to resist their call. They made sure we would never fully listen to their words.”
Myrr stopped her abruptly, pulling her face to face so he could search her eyes fully when he asked, “There's a way to silence the darkness?”
She dropped her head after several moments of contemplation passed by, whispering, “There was a price to be paid. I spent 30 years there having the lessons beaten and burned into me. It was the only way to ensure they remained. We had to know the cost of failure.”
He didn't let go, continuing to stare, knowing there was more that could be said if he was just patient enough to wait it out.
“You have to find something that makes it quiet and drives it away, and you have to keep that in your head, always. Don't ever let it drop, not even for a moment.”
He stopped asking questions then to consider the way she made the statement, as if it had been repeated thousands of times before. It was something drilled into her to a deep enough level that Myrr was certain she could recite it in her sleep. There wouldn't be more time for talk anyway, as the cloying scent of scuttler dung torches wafted towards the fugitives now that they were near their destination.
The torches reeked, and gave off a thick, black smoke, but they resisted the rain and allowed for some scant illumination on the streets deemed worthy of lighting by the Knighthood. Now was the true danger as they entered a section of the ward where soldiers were found more frequently. Coming out of her recitation of lessons long past, Tala continued to let Myrr lead, even as she had to support his decrepit frame.
A handful of Cestians made their way through the local thoroughfare, eyes all turned down to avoid contact with other travelers on the street. Anyone could be a rebel looking to cause trouble, just as anyone could be ready to shout for the local guard, currying favor by turning in a suspected resistance member. With no desire to be noticed in the gloom and become a potential target, none of the citizens spoke aloud or acknowledged one another, quickly moving along and only murmuring quietly. Any brief glance of those close enough to see revealed clear suspicion and hostility or extreme nervousness and a sudden shifting of the eyes towards anything else.
Just beginning to relax as they moved further into the heart of the city without being noticed, Myrr's heart skipped a beat when a patrol of three soldiers rounded the corner, one holding a lengthy spear twice as tall as a man and the other two openly wielding their spiked maces. He nearly stumbled and fell when catching sight of them, only remaining upright and moving when Tala swiftly grabbed hold of his arm and continued ahead at a brisk pace, dragging Myrr forward until he could recover his balance.
Only daring a quick glimpse to the side of his peripheral sight, Myrr caught the eye of one of the patrolling guards, bearing the iconic black chainmail armor draped over with the symbol of his order, a dark green fist facing upward and surrounded by five points. Swallowing his urge to flee quickly down a side street or attack first and hope for the best, Myrr cast his eyes down on the broken cobblestones as the rest of the citizens had done and kept putting one foot in front of the other, crossing by the patrol that seemed uninterested in two more miscreants returning home after all the commotion.
Striding with clear purpose towards some destination that would certainly regret their arrival, the boots of the soldiers clacking on the road finally faded behind them. Tala jabbed a finger deeply into Myrr's ribs, hissing at him to keep steady if they wanted to survive the apparently deadly task of walking down the street. He nodded and trudged forward, wondering at the iron resolve of this woman who had managed to survive the occupation without taking refuge in a bolt hole beneath the earth.
Forcing his breathing into a regular pattern and aligning his thoughts again towards the task at hand, he took the opportunity to scrutinize the state of the city since he'd gone to ground, and was not pleased by the clear decline apparent in just a handful of days. While desperation was written on the faces of any who took to the streets and walked beneath the wan light of the torches, there was a clear tension in the air that had only worsened after the eastern ward was cleansed of troublemakers those few nights past.
Whenever a knight pushed through the street or a citizen spotted one of Cestia's many gutted or burned homes, that look of despair twisted into open anger. The soldiers had no idea how many people strolling by were actively plotting murder and mayhem in their minds. An obvious pent-up charge sizzled across the air of the besieged city that was on the verge of exploding. Myrr could actively feel the hate radiating off every man, woman, and child, and eventually he had to avert his gaze to the cobblestones below, wondering which of these tormented souls was going to break first and throw a rock or pull a knife.
Not long after the knights fade
d into the darkness and the sound of their boots stopped echoing across the emptying streets, they heard the first baying cries, close enough to only be a few blocks away. The Overlord's pets were on the hunt, and anyone they tracked down would be torn to shreds in moments.
Discarding her characteristic deliberate thought, it was Tala who voiced the concern first. “Scuttlers? We should depart the street.”
Shivering in the all-consuming drizzle, Myrr pulled Tala into the entryway of a clearly deserted building to take shelter and rest for a moment, hoping the beasts would either ignore this section of the ward or pass by quickly. There was a danger to them beyond just the physical death to be dealt out, as many of the city's lost souls with broken minds could attest.
The disorienting cacophony of howls came closer as the Overlord's hounds shrieked from both mouths in alternating calls. They were much closer than either had originally expected, and in only moments the nearby road was filled with their shadowy bulks, skulking about in search of hidden prey.
The cowering pair could only make out the creature's basic shapes as they loped and skittered in a pack away from the pale torchlight, having no need for illumination to hunt their quarry. Eight bent legs were arranged equidistant around each smooth and striated torso, with a snarling face full of teeth capping either end of the central body, like some feral wolf that just loped out of a nightmare.
Though each stood nearly as tall as the average Cestian when remaining low to the ground and scuttling at full speed, the beasts became truly monstrous when their legs unbent and propelled their two-headed forms straight upwards like spindly stilts. When fully upright, the hounds towered above to look down with their dual faces, capable of seeing into second floor windows and reaching after hiding prey as each leg bent and unlocked.
Myrr knew neither height nor distance was helpful in avoiding the things, as each stilt leg ended in a sticky, padded paw that allowed for vertical or horizontal movement across nearly any surface. Those foolish enough to try to scale the inner walls or outer defenses of the city and make a run for it would find the scuttlers could outpace even the most athletic of Cestians.
While they were partially obscured by the lack of full light, both Myrr and Tala knew all too well what they looked like up close, as they'd been loosed more and more frequently in recent weeks to track down conspirators and rebels. They could only hope the Overlord had sent them after the scent of some other fugitive, as facing a full pack would be certain death, even if he could rouse his quiet passenger to their defense.
There would be no need, however, as the beasts suddenly scrambled together into a circular formation just as a half-dozen mad rebels burst out of a nearby doorway, letting loose cries of freedom and glory. Armed with only makeshift weapons or pilfered blades, the sortie was doomed from the start, crashing against an unyielding wall of snarling death.
Calls for Cestian independence turned to screams of agony as canine faces tore into the freedom fighters, ripping free throats and effortlessly tearing arms from sockets. Myrr had seen it before and knew there was nothing to be done for these men and women giving their lives for a lost cause. Even if they'd been armored or wielding anything approaching proper weaponry, they still would have been torn to shreds by the scuttler's inhumanly strong jaws.
While the street in front of their hiding place became yet another abattoir in Cestia's growing collection of grave sites, Myrr motioned for Tala to lift him upright and they broke from beneath the building's eave, fleeing the opposite direction of the carnage. He wondered as they lurched down the street whether the rebels had any idea they'd just saved two lives.
12 (Western Ward, Early True Night)
Worried they appeared as conspiratorial as they were actually being, two hunched figures whispering quietly in the doorway as though still trapped beneath Otta's shop, Myrr was suddenly glad for the darkness only occasionally peppered through with light from star or torch.
He knew they'd have to work quickly or soon be caught by a patrol, but hoped the ongoing battle only a few streets over between the suicidal rebels and the eight-legged beasts would draw attention away. Myrr was still having trouble understanding why the patrol earlier hadn't accosted them, and wondered what calamity must be befalling another area of the city to pull their attention away. Whatever it was, it had worked in their favor.
As much as he wanted to grab Tala's hand and rush into the two-story brick structure across from them, for now they had to wait just a bit longer. The soldiers always arrived at the same time, and if luck stayed on their side, that wouldn't change in spite of all the upheaval so far that night.
Noticing the far-off, glazed-over look, something he expected Casterly had seen in his own eyes during the last few cramped days of hiding, he tried to find some way to engage her mind, needing her to be alert for what was to come. There was nothing pleasant to speak of in the circumstances, so he returned to past pain, trusting it would shock her back into awareness.
“You said these people, your caretakers, they had to teach you the cost of failure. What happens when you listen to the voices? Is it like what happened to those knights before you found me in the Briar?”
That ever-present pause was there, but soon broke away. “If you listen long enough, the words start to make sense. They tell us how to bring things through. Things like the voices, but with solid forms. We could become stable doorways if we don't stand fast against them at every moment.”
The far-away look faded and was replaced by an anger in her voice. “I wondered why they didn't just kill us all. It would have been a kindness. But sometimes killing us lets the things through anyway. It's dangerous to let us live, and dangerous to put us down.”
Tala closed her eyes then as though remembering something harsh, telling the next recollection all in a rush without her usual pause, “Some of the others couldn't withstand the training and had to be sacrificed. They made us do it, and they made us deal with the things that breached through, so we could better understand the stakes. Most of us didn't survive that night.”
She was silent then, shut down even worse than before he'd started his questioning. He had to get her engaged again, as time was running short and soon they'd have to spring into action. Platitudes and apologies were no good, they meant nothing to anyone who had survived in Cestia, so instead he probed ahead with another question. “Why did you leave?”
Something like a chuckle, but more angry than mirthful, was the first response. After a few moments of silence she choked out, “They exiled me. My whole life as a prisoner and they sent me away. For their protection they said, as I was too unstable to hold up the wall on my own any longer.”
Learning her pattern, he held back his desire to console and waited, knowing something else was coming. “I arrived in Cestia two nights before the invasion. Myrr, they knew somehow. I think the caretakers wanted me here for this.”
There was nothing to say, so Myrr remained silent. Words couldn't undo any of it, and they wouldn't unravel the tangled threads of an uncertain future. To his surprise, it was Tala who spoke again next, suddenly more alert now that she'd begun talking.
“Well, what now?”
The sound of her voice shattered through the harsh drizzle of the weeping sky and Myrr realized he'd been drifting off in his own thoughts again, just as he'd done beneath the shop not long ago. Hoping his bouts of absence weren't becoming a noticeable pattern yet, he set about explaining the danger to come, expecting to be abandoned when his mad plan was fully revealed.
“First we need a way to blend in. We're going to have to move around the city without being stopped. Hiding isn't working anymore.”
Unpleasant words bringing equally unwanted memories wouldn't sting nearly as much as what the soldiers had in store if they were discovered attempting to escape the city.
“We were very lucky back there, but it won't hold. We need a way to avoid scrutiny altogether. It's risky – they might not believe we are who we say we are – b
ut it's no more dangerous than being caught in the open any other way.”
His avoidance of the particulars didn't go unnoticed as Tala whispered back the obvious question, “Who we say we are?”
Shivering in the cold and wishing he was anywhere else, Myrr drew a deep breath before revealing the most dangerous part yet.
“The Knights of the Black Gauntlet are about to get two new recruits. If we do this right we won't have to kill any of them, but if not hopefully you're not averse to getting your hands dirty.” He paused then, echoing her pattern, before adding, “Perhaps you'd be interested in redress for what was done to your son.”
The soft rain and waning light were the only response while Tala digested the idea. “Do you truly believe we could masquerade as soldiers?”