‘Right’ her father said, pulling Marmot and the wagon to a stop in front of the village’s large, three storey tavern, the second largest building in the village behind the large stone Rognian church, ‘I have to go unload all this.’ He said, shrugging towards the goods they had brought, piled in the back of the wagon and used as makeshift seats during the journey. ‘Boll, Joahn, you stay with your mother, and do as she says’ he said to the children, who nodded their ascent in silence. ‘The rest of you, you’re on your own. We’ll meet back here in two hours for dinner.’
Omah, Serah, Yolan and the children made their way down from the wagon as Jayke walked up to Marmot. ‘I’ll join you Pops.’ He said, taking Marmots reigns and rubbing the horse’s nose friendlily.
Her mother and sisters would visit the market, looking for some of the few vegetables they didn’t grow, and for any of the spices they were running low on. Her father and brother began to lead the horse and wagon off down the road, then Johan would head straight for the tavern for ale; he did every time they visited Oortain’s Copse. So Erris was left on her own, as she liked it. Her birthday was the first excuse the family had made to go into town in over a month and a half, which left each of them with errands, some important, some not. As the rest of her family separated, smiling and talking together as they split into groups, Erris walked purposefully over the grey cobblestone streets, her hardbound history text clutched in her arms. She knew exactly where she would be spending her afternoon.
It was strange, going so long without news or contact from the outside world, but Erris’ parents seemed to prefer it that way, and Erris had never known any different. She was still getting used to having Yolan, Jayke’s new bride, around the house. Yolan came from a farm some four hours away from home, and Erris had only seen her twice before she and Jayke were married. She had never even spoken to Yolan before the wedding. She liked Yolan, liked that she was part of the family now, but it was a sign of how secluded her family really was.
It was part of the reason Erris had chosen to come to Oortain’s Copse for her birthday. The sights and sounds of a town were almost mystifying to her. There were dozens of houses; hundreds of people in Oortain’s Copse! How did they all live together? She knew that cities were larger, and had many times more inhabitants, but those were just wrong. Oortain’s Copse she felt she might someday be able to understand. Small enough to know every persons name, but big enough that, if you didn’t want to be alone, you didn’t have to be.
The other part of why Erris had chosen Oortain’s Copse for her birthday, not counting being able to see the soldiers (that came only from a small, unfamiliar but slowly growing part of her mind), was that Oortain’s Copse was different from the other little villages that dotted the Regan and Rognian countryside’s within a day’s walk of the farm. It was Erris’ favourite of the villages for one reason: It had a bookstore. Or maybe more of a library, it really depended.
The bookstore encompassed the first and second floors of a three-storey house that stood on one of the villages smaller side streets. It was owned, curated, and managed by a nice old man. He would sell you some books, lend you others if he liked you, and not let you even touch even more. He took even more care of his collection than Erris did. She sometimes wished she might someday own a collection its equal.
She liked the old man, Erris thought as she walked down the completely deserted streets, oblivious to the boarded windows and doors on several of the tall narrow houses she passed, and the general air of desertion that encompassed the town as a whole. The bookkeeper was old and crooked, and walked with a cane, and he smelled dry and musty, like everything else in his house, but he knew so much about books. He had more in his house than Erris thought she could ever read, and he knew everything about all of them. He had read or seen every book Erris owned, and she could remember several times, spending her entire time in Oortain’s Copse simply discussing the books with him, what they said, what they meant, what she thought of them.
In short, the little old man’s bookstore was a paradise to Erris, and always her first stop when she came to Oortain’s Copse. Often her only stop. Her father and brothers could deal with trade, her sisters and mother could handle the shopping. All she cared about were her books.
So it was with some surprise, and no small amount of panic, that Erris came upon the shriveled old man outside his house, waving his cane at two muscled youths who were busy filling a large, canvas-topped wagon with boxes upon boxes of what Erris could only assume were the old man’s vast collection of books.
Erris stood, poleaxed and slack-jawed, in the middle of the deserted street until the man finally looked up and saw her standing there, motionless. Moving to the front seat of the wagon, he grabbed a small burlap sack, then slowly walked over to where Erris still stood, his cane tapping out a broken gait on the cobblestone street.
‘Girl’ the old man started, setting the sack down slowly in front of Erris, but he got no further.
‘What’s going on?’ Erris started, speaking rapidly, her questions tumbling over each other, ‘Where are your books going? Where are you going? Are you leaving? You can’t leave!’ she stammered, taking a breath and leaning towards the bookkeeper anxiously. Erris noticed that she was taller than him now, though whether because he was shrinking or she growing she didn’t know or care. He was shriveled and bent, but always before he had been taller than Erris. He would always look down at her with his gently wrinkled face, and he just seemed so dear. Now she was taller than him, and she felt the revelation meant something more than she was growing, something more important, but at the time she couldn’t put a finger on it. She was much more concerned for her books than for anything else.
‘Calm yourself, child’ the old man said, reaching out and putting a wizened old hand on her shoulder, and breathing in deeply. ‘Trouble is coming’ he said with a sigh, looking her straight in the eye. His eyes were dark black, and filled with tremendous knowledge and insight and, for the first time, sorrow. ‘My friends and I are leaving before it hits. We will go to the capital, where we can be safe.’ He said, motioning backwards toward the wagon with his free hand. ‘We have friends in the capital who will care for us.’ The old man had always called his books his friends. Erris had always thought him endearingly strange before, now she only felt confused.
‘What trouble? Why do you have to leave?’ Erris asked, still unbelieving. ‘Where will I go for books now?’
‘I am sorry child, more sorry than you can know,’ the bookkeeper said with another sigh. ‘If you do not know yet of the trouble coming, then it is not my place to tell you. Ask your father, if he is here with you. If he does not know yet, he will before the day is out.’
As Erris stared at him, uncomprehending, the bookkeeper poked the sack on the ground with his cane.
‘As for friends, here. These are for you. I did not let you see them before, nor did I intend to show you them so soon, but you will enjoy them. And they are not welcome where I am going. I was going to leave them at the tavern for you or your father, but this is better.’ The old man looked at her again, and she could feel how serious he was. ‘Just be careful with them, girl. These books are priceless; show them to no-one. Keep them away from the church, they would not understand, or appreciate.’
Erris knelt down slowly and opened the burlap sack, confused. ‘Why would the church hate books?’ she thought, then she remembered Dom. He had burned one of her books; maybe these were the same. Inside the sack were a good dozen or so small, leather-bound books. As Erris looked up, trying to stammer out confused thanks, the old man turned and started quickly back towards his wagon, waving his cane at the two youths who had apparently taken the time out from under his watchful eye to rest.
As she stood in the middle of the road, holding the bag and watching the departing bookkeeper, still confused, Erris realized that, after knowing him for years, Erris had never learned his name. He had always been the old man, or the bookkeeper, to her. Now she k
new she would never see him again, and she hadn’t even said goodbye.
She still could of course. He stood only a few paces away, waving his cane wildly in the air. But for some reason she felt she shouldn’t. Maybe she was getting older, but she thought the old man seemed sad when he said goodbye, sad enough that going back to him now would be worse.
As she turned and slowly walked, blank faced, back towards the tavern, Erris found herself feeling soul-crushingly lonely. Once again she ignored the cobblestone streets with their boarded up houses. She missed the overgrown gardens which had seemingly been left to grow wild for weeks. She missed that the streets were empty, and that no smokestack showed signs of use. Not that she could be blamed, not really, not after what had just happened. The day had just turned into one of the worst ever.
***
The tavern was not empty when Erris walked in, but the only member of her family there yet was Johan, who sat alone in a corner nursing a mug of ale till Erris joined him.
Johan nodded to her as she sat next to him, and Erris shrugged absently in response to his raised, questioning eyebrow when he saw the glass of wine she brought to the table. The innkeeper hadn’t questioned when she asked for it; a raised eyebrow was the extent of the communication between them. The coppers she would have spent on books no longer could be, and wine was as good as anything else. After that they sat, drank slowly, and watched the tavern.
The tavern was dark, as taverns are wont to be, lit only by candles on each table and several lanterns around the walls. The floor was clean-swept, the tables and chairs well polished, but it was much emptier than she had ever seen it before. The innkeeper stood at the bar by the door, slowly polishing mugs, absently looking over the floor in front of him, but there was no sign of the large guard who had stood at the door the last time Erris was in.
Large wooden tables dotted the taverns floor, all made of dark, polished wood, stained and scratched from years of use. There was a rise at the center of the front hall where musicians normally played but, just like the rest of the tavern, it was empty. The smells of cooking came from the back of the tavern behind the bar, as they should, but the tavern itself still seemed wrong. It exuded a dark, uncomfortable air, as if the tavern itself was grim and contemplative.
The tavern was by no means crowded, but it was also not very quiet. There were several men at the bar who looked like regulars; their heads down, they concentrated on the food or beer in front of them, and on ignoring each other and the rest of the tavern. But those men were quiet.
What noise there was came from a group of ten or so young soldiers who had pulled together two tables in the center of the tavern floor, and were drinking, singing boisterously, and telling loud, off-colour jokes. Normally Erris would have been intrigued by them, her eyes drawn to their tight breeches and fine, gold buttoned red jackets, but the noise and general lack of decorum or professionalism that they sported turned her off from the start, helped in no small part by her dark mood.
They were big, Erris saw as she glanced at them uninterestedly, but not nearly as big as her father and brothers. They were also older. These were not the sixteen year old recruits who did the rounds of the farms and small towns, giving out news and keeping the peace, these soldiers were all older, more experienced than that. But they weren’t grizzled old veterans either. The soldiers in the tavern seemed to be in their mid twenties, young enough to have kept their youthful exuberance, not yet old enough to have gained wisdom.
Before too long, the rest of the family made it to the tavern as well, and they ate, but it was a somber group that sat at the table. None of them had enjoyed what they’d found in Oortain’s Copse it seemed, and even the children kept quiet. There seemed something wrong with the atmosphere, Erris thought, that the soldiers should still be drinking loudly, while her family sat so gloomily, and on her birthday no less. Something was clearly wrong in the world, she felt, she just couldn’t tell what. Her eyes slightly glazed and her movements sluggish, she wondered if more wine might help her solve the problem; identify what it was that felt so wrong. Or maybe it was the three glasses of wine she had already drunk that was making it so hard to think, she couldn’t quite tell.
‘Right,’ her father said abruptly, and Erris’ vision swam slightly as she quickly snapped her eyes up towards him from the table she had been staring at, half asleep.
‘We need to talk.’ Johan senior said, standing, and Erris could tell he was serious, though he shook his head as she started to try to rise. ‘Girls, stay here and watch the children.’ He said, looking at Yolan, Serah and Erris, then he motioned with his head to a corner of the tavern away from both their table, and the soldiers. The rest of the family stood and followed him, and left Erris, her sisters, and Boll sitting or sleeping at the table.
Yolan and Serah both looked concerned as they glanced steadily towards the rest of the family, who now stood huddled in a close circle, listening as Jayke talked animatedly. Erris didn’t know what they knew, what they had heard or figured out, but it was certainly more than she had.
‘The bookkeeper is leaving’ Erris said to no-one, and no-one listened. Joahn and Boll were asleep, Yolan and Serah caught up in their own thoughts. Everyone at the table was much more invested in something else, and the air of general melancholy continued unabated.
Several minutes passed, the three sisters trying in vain to understand what was happening, what the rest of the family could be talking about. The two children, Joahn and Boll, young and innocent, slept, blissfully unaware. They wouldn’t know there was something wrong, they couldn’t. They had eaten, were happy, and now slept. Even Erris, who had trouble following what was happening, knew more than them; knew that something was wrong. At that moment, she envied their sleeping forms.
Dusk had fallen, the quickly retreating sun casting shadows on the world outside, and between the long day of travel and a glass of wine each during supper, Joahn and Boll both sat with their backs against the tavern wall, their heads resting against each other as they slept. Erris was tempted to join them.
Erris had just decided to roll herself up along one of the tavern benches; she could learn nothing watching the discussion in the corner, and sleep was calling so sweetly, when the thick silence at the table was noisily broken.
Chairs dragged and the table shifted as three of the young, red uniformed soldiers from the center tables got up and sat at her table, two to the right of Yolan and one on Erris’ left, accompanied by laughter and jeers from the other soldiers still seated at their tables.
The three were clearly intoxicated; their eyes were glazed and their speech slurred as the soldier closest to Yolan put his arm around her and started to speak.
‘What’re you preddy ladies doing all alone’ he said as he tried to stroke Yolan’s auburn hair. Yolan recoiled sharply from his touch, and likely the alcohol on his breath as well.
All three soldiers were young, possibly the youngest of the ten in the tavern, but tall and well-muscled. While the short, straight swords sheathed at their hips glittered menacingly, their once pristine red uniforms were splotched and stained from beer and food.
Unfortunately the soldiers were not so drunk as to be easily fended off, and the soldier with his arm around Yolan easily held onto her as she tried to squirm away, simply shifting his chair closer, and his arm tighter around her in the process.
Erris was even more surprised as the soldier next to her slid an arm around her shoulder as well, grabbing her left wrist tightly in his other hand to keep her from twisting away.
His eyes were half closed, and very bloodshot as he squinted at her, as if weighing something. He grabbed her chin hard with the rough hand that was draped around her shoulder as she tried to turn away, forcing her to face him.
Erris’ world spun as his face filled her vision. The soldier was young, eighteen at most, with unkempt hair, a pimpled face, and a good week’s stubble growing in sparse patches on his chin. It was not till he opened his mouth thoug
h that she realized why her head was spinning.
The sickeningly cloying smell of decay, combined with the smell of too much alcohol, washed over her as he started to speak, and she could see that at least one of his teeth was black, and close to rotting out as she tried to keep herself from vomiting.
‘Your really predty too’ he slurred as he let go of her chin, apparently finished with his unwanted appraisal.
Erris turned her head away quickly as she fought for air, happy to be free from the soldiers’ rough grasp till she looked back to the table and saw the third soldier leaning over the table towards Serah, squinting hard.
‘You’re pretty ugly,’ he said, leaning back, ‘Why aren’t you pretty like th’other two? Hey Fraen, I want a pretty one too. Share yours.’ He shoved at the soldier holding Yolan, who laughed and batted his hand away absently. The second soldier was still grabbing at Yolan, who continued to struggle futilely.
Erris stood quickly, too quickly for the soldier beside her to catch, and slammed her balled fists furiously against the table.
‘Leave her alone!’ she shouted, and all laughter at the soldiers’ tables stopped for a second, until she was grabbed roughly from behind.
The soldier behind her had reached around her waist with his left arm, and he forced her to sit on his lap as he slung his right arm over her shoulder again.
‘Shut it, bitch’ he said, and Erris started to squirm as he began to slide his right hand down the front of her dress.
The Fire and the Fog Page 7