The Fire and the Fog

by David Alloggia

  Only one of the thugs would die, he hoped. The frozen one should only lose a leg, and the other two were hopefully just unconscious. The one he had used the knife on was no more than scared. He turned another corner in the alley as he considered. He would have to leave the city now, there was nothing for it. He was almost out of places to stay, and now he had badly injured four men. And they knew what he looked like. The church guards would surely try to find him.

  He would buy some more painting supplies, then leave, Dan’r decided, and he pulled another wineskin from his cloak and drank as he ran.

  II

  He would have to leave the city, Dan’r knew as he sat quietly on the side of the street several hours later, slowly nursing yet another wineskin. Even through the constant fog in his mind, Dan’r accepted that murdering one man, and severely wounding four more alone would catch the notice of the church guards. Doing so with an Art, something that seemed to not exist in poor, drab, colourless Dohm, well, that tended to set the church on even more of an edge than common murders.

  In this case, the attention and anger of the church meant increased guard patrols, and each of the guards had probably been given some sort of description of Dan’r. He had already spent the morning dodging guards, and it would only get harder as the citizens of Wraegn found out about him, and about the murder. Someday he would learn to kill people right out, Dan’r thought, that way no descriptions could be given. He sometimes wished he had a Musician, or even a Writer with him, but then, Artists were rare even in Alta. He had never heard even the vaguest tales of one in Dohm.

  Dan’r’s thoughts jumped and skipped as he sat and drank. The guards were certainly a problem he thought, watching with half-lidded eyes as three well dressed women walked by. They were haughty, officious, and their necklines were high, but the colours of their dresses were nice, and the dresses themselves well fitted. An age ago he would have offered to paint them. The three of them, a redhead, blonde, and brunette, all in one painting, they would be gorgeous, if he could get the lighting and paints right. Which he could.

  That thought belonged in another age though, Dan’r remembered as the three pretty women disappeared into the throng of people that crowded the street, and Dan’r was brought back to the present again. The guards were after him. And worse than the guards, he had well and truly started to run out of taverns to visit. The Old Goat, the Broken Rudder, the other few taverns worth their coin in Wraegn, he could not easily drink at any of them again, and that scared him more than any number of church guards could. No taverns to drink at meant no taverns to fight at, and that meant it was time to move on, as it had for longer than Dan’r cared to remember.

  He wondered how the thugs he had beaten earlier had described him as he lowered his hooded head, glancing with the tops of his eyes as a group of heavily plated church soldiers trotted by, their shining armour and heavy footfalls creating a rhythmic jingling drum beat as they passed. The soldiers were wearing bits of segmented plate-mail over red coats, the silvery metal over their thighs, stomachs, shoulders, and heads fitting perfectly on top of their bright red uniform. The soldier in the front even had a bright red plume on the crest of his helmet. He hated to admit it, but they were certainly a sight to see. He could picture them in a wheat field, the red and silver of their uniforms surrounded by golden grain, all shining brightly in the sun. He would paint them, standing tall, officious, seemingly invincible in their burnished armour, mighty and proud. Or maybe he would paint them beside a deep blue lake, a deep orange sun setting behind them as they charged an unseen enemy, their faces filled with anger, fury, fear. He could see himself painting each of them, stark and sharp, fully in focus in the center of the piece.

  Then around the edges, in the shadows between the tall stalks of wheat, behind bushes or boulders, he would add shadows, brown and black, barely visible. You would have to concentrate to see them, they would be so well hidden. An arm here, a cowl-covered face there, the shadows would be nearly invisible. But when you found them, the full image would unveil. The dull glint of a sword, the sharp arc of a taught bowstring would illuminate the shadows, and you would be able to see the men in the shadows standing quickly and feathering the sharp, proud church soldiers with arrows, running through with their dull grey swords, and then disappearing in the shadows again. Through the alcohol he saw it all, just as he had with the three women, and he knew he could have painted it. He knew he could have painted it so that anyone who looked at the painting would see his story, an entire story captured in the blink of an eye. He could have done it.

  But he wouldn’t. He tossed his empty wineskin to his side as the soldiers passed him, and he looked at his hands; he watched them shake slightly, and stared at his slowly yellowing fingertips. He had seen this happen before; he had watched his father die of too much wine, and he knew that, slowly, he would die too. But that wouldn’t matter. Once he was dead, he would be at peace, and he would finally be welcomed into the flaming arms of Rohc the Forgiver, his sins burnt away before being handed, naked and clean, to Phrae, to Death herself.

  Rohc and Phrae would have to wait though; Shahn, life, still held onto him. He would let the alcohol consume him, he had no choice now, but he wouldn’t let the guards find him. The group had finally passed him, their jingling was now thirty odd paces further down the street; they had not recognized him. It had happened a few times before to Dan’r since he had been stranded on these shores. Anytime someone saw him work his Art they tended to describe him, well, wrong. Two to three feet taller than he really was, robed all in black, rather than the dirty grey and brown he wore, his face indistinguishable from the shadow behind it. It seemed the thugs from earlier had been no different. It surprised him, sometimes, the lack of attention to detail people paid when panicked or surprised. But he made use of it.

  There were even stories popping up about him, legends; the dark wanderer, calling down strange magicks to protect the weak and innocent. The stories had been spreading like wildfire through inns and taverns. Dan’r had even heard of mothers telling the stories to their children. It was another problem with the lack of taverns, Dan’r thought as he shook his head, trying to clear his eyes and mind from the fog that seemed to float over them perpetually now. People in taverns always told stories, and Dan’r loved hearing the stories of him. For some reason he enjoyed being seen as a gallant stranger, cloaked in shadows and justice, rather than the drunk he was.

  ‘I wonder what they’ll say I did this time’, he thought to himself as he started to stand, pulling another wineskin from his cloak. He was running out, he felt his thumb lightly brushing the papers in his cloak pockets, the years of practice brushing aside the fog of alcohol for so familiar an action. Maybe he would have saved a poor family from a gang of thieves this time, or stopped a group of would-be ravishers from stealing a young girl’s virtue.

  Whatever deeds storytellers invented for him, however distorted and twisted Dan’r’s activities became after each telling, he was always a tall, strong, gentle knight, robed in black, who melted into the shadows and disappeared after his good deed, never asking for compensation or recompense. He meted out justice, and then disappeared, protecting the innocent and poor wherever he went. In the stories he was a noble warrior, a knight, a saint. Never a drunk.

  He smiled slightly as he stumbled through the streets, following the direction the patrol of soldiers had gone before him. He swerved as he walked, lurching whenever he lifted his wineskin to his lips. Adrenaline from the fight gone, his drunkenness shone through. He was too preoccupied with his inebriated self congratulations to notice passersby who sniffed and skirted around him as he passed; he completely missed the looks of disgust, the cries of beratement when he stumbled into a passing pregnant woman, knocking her and her scant groceries to the dirty streets.

  Dan’r simply stumbled down the road, quickly losing himself in the crowd, his mind focused as only the mind of a frequent drunk can be. He no longer paid attention to the growing cro
wds in Wraegn. He had been in the city for two months this time, and the number of dishevelled refugees had been climbing steadily in the past weeks. More people in the streets meant more beggars in the alleys, more ruffians in the taverns. Dan’r didn’t care why they were there.

  He paid no attention to the crowds around him or the soldiers on the street behind him as he stood at looked finally at his destination. He had only been here once since he arrived in the city, in a moment of desperation. The one place in the city to buy painting supplies, he had promised himself after his first trip he would not come back, that he would sober up for a day and make his own. But he had run out of time.

  It was horrible really, Dan’r thought as he walked up the two stone steps and opened the shops glass-paned door, a tiny brass bell announcing his presence as he stepped in. The front window of the shop showed large metal buckets of paint and large, wide, crudely bristled brushes. It was a paint store, but paint for the crude and often garishly coloured houses that the people of Rognia preferred for some reason.

  Dan’r had his own brushes of course, real painting was impossible with the monstrosities the people of Rognia called brushes, but he would need their paint. There had been a time, back in Alta, and even during the beginning of his stay in Dohm, when he had done everything himself. He could vaguely remember stretching his own canvas and hand-crafting brushes specifically to the paintings he would use them for, discarding them after. He could almost recall harvesting and mixing the various pigments and oils to make his own paints, in the colours he needed, combining them to create all the rainbow had to offer and more.

  Now he simply bought what was available, and if his paintings came out either dull and splotchy or too vibrant, the colours screaming in protest on his medium; if his Art came out dull, sour, and overpowered, well, Dan’r didn’t care. His paintings had lost their life, just as he had, so what did it matter. The money was spendable, and the wine was drinkable, and that was enough.

  ‘Ey!’ Dan’r’s concentration, his inner monologue, was broken by a short, stocky man in a heavily paint-stained apron yelling and waving an arm impatiently in Dan’r’s face. ‘What do you want?’ the short man said, putting his hands palm down on the paint-speckled wooden counter, rolling his shoulders and looking up, staring Dan’r in the face.

  ‘I need some paint’ Dan’r said as he moved to the left side of the counter. The front of the store was small, and the counter cut it in half width wise. The front entrance to the store was on the right, the store window and a large book on the left. It was to the book on the counter that Dan’r stepped, and began to open. Inside were sheets of paper, stained with different colours, that Dan’r would order from, or would have, but the shopkeep spoke before Dan’r could start listing what he needed.

  ‘Too bad mate.’ The short man said, cocking his head back and to the side as Dan’r turned to face him.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Dan’r started, but the shopkeeper starting shaking his head slowly, still looking Dan’r in the eye.

  ‘I don’t sell to drunks, or to people who huff paint, and you look like both.’

  ‘Look, shorty,’ Dan’r started, leaning forward and putting his hands on the counter as well, matching the shorter man stare for stare, ‘my money’s good, so you’re gonna sell to me.’ This was going wrong already. Dan’r couldn’t fight the shopkeeper, he hadn’t done anything wrong, but Dan’r needed the paint.

  ‘That’s too bad,’ the shopkeeper replied, sliding one hand under the countertop, ‘now get out before I call the guard.’ He continued, pulling out a large wooden club from under the counter and placing it with a thud on the countertop.

  ‘Look,’ Dan’r said, reaching into his cloak for coin to mollify the man, but he was stopped before he could make it to the papers he was grabbing for.

  ‘Stop there, drunk,’ the shopkeep said, picking up the club from the countertop and pointing it towards Dan’r, ‘get your hand out of your cloak, and get out of my shoppe.’

  ‘I just need some paint’

  ‘And I don’t care what you need, I need you to leave.’

  ‘Look, threaten me all you want, I’m not leaving without some paint.’

  ‘Yeah, we’ll see about that,’ the shopkeeper said, glancing quickly towards the door of the shop, just as Dan’r heard the bell on the front door jingle its slow warning.

  Dan’r turned his head slightly, looking away from the short shopkeeper and his club, in time to watch four heavily plate-armoured soldiers walk into the store. The one at the front had the red feather on the crest of his helm that signified a guard sergeant, and a longsword gleamed brilliantly at his waist. The other three soldiers carried rifles, and Dan’r could see six more identically armed and armoured soldiers standing at attention outside the store. The sergeant looked at Dan’r as he spoke, one hand nonchalantly on his sword as he spoke.

  ‘Is there a problem here, Goah?’

  ‘No, Sergeant,’ the shopkeeper replied, ‘this drunk here was just leaving, wasn’t he?’ he asked Dan’r pointedly, still leaning against the counter, the club still in one hand.

  ‘He’ll be leaving with us, Goah,’ the Sergeant replied, his eyes still fixed on Dan’r, ‘we have some questions for him.’

  Dan’r’s hand was still inside his cloak, thumbing paper as the guard and the shopkeeper talked. His mind was churning, trying to swim through the fog as he thought. He didn’t like what he was going to do; he wasn’t sure if it would work. But he had no choice. His heart was pumping, his adrenaline flowing, and his drunkenness diminishing.

  Without a word, with no indication to alert the soldiers he might try something, Dan’r turned, whipped a paper out with his right hand, braced his right with his left, and jumped. The soldier was starting to move, his sword an inch out of its scabbard, when Dan’r pushed. He pushed hard against the counter, and the counter didn’t move. But he did. As usual when Dan’r pushed, there was no sound, no smell, just the slight afterimage of a breeze in the air, and the feeling of intense pressure against Dan’r’s arms and front.

  Dan’r flew back and crashed into the glass window of the store, the glass and metal of the window panes shattering and straining as his back hit them. But the window broke, and Dan’r flew through. He landed on the street outside the shop, rolling head-over-heels backwards through the shattered metal and broken glass. His roll ended with him on his feet, and his feet were already pumping against his momentum, against the glass and cobblestone street, as he set off at a run. He was away, barreling through the crowds, before the soldiers waiting outside the store could do anything, before the sergeant inside could make it out through the door, and by then it was too late. They would never catch him in their heavy hide and plate armour, and they couldn’t shoot at him on such a crowded street.

  Dan’r ran through the main street for a time, darting through the crowd and listening for the telltale jingle of church armour as he ran, but he slowed as he reached the north end of town and still heard nothing. There were two main roads leading out from Wraegn, one to the north and one to the east, and Dan’r already knew he would go north. To the north lay areas less dominated by the church, and eventually the wooden country of Heyle. The town West would be good to him, it always had before, and there was a brewer there who made several particularly fine types of ale, sweetened with honey and nuts from the tall trees surrounding the town. At least he would go to West if the fog had not yet reached it. Dan’r would have to check on the location of the fog soon; it had been over a week since he had last cared enough to.

  The fog tickled something in the back of Dan’r’s mind, as it always did, but other thoughts overpowered it. The fog was interesting, a curiosity, something that maybe he should have liked to paint. But in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t matter at all.

  Still, even if the killer fog was creeping slowly over the north-west of Dohm, that wouldn’t stop Dan’r from going north. Sure, the north road from Wraegn led closer to the fog, but the E
astern road led further into Dohm, and most of the side of the road was being excavated and patrolled by church soldiers. Dan’r had heard that they were building a new railroad, supposed to be the longest ever. Then he had lost interest and stopped paying attention to the conversation in the tavern, and had gone back to his beer. What they were building didn’t matter. The road was patrolled, and was therefore as good as closed.

  Dan’r kept moving slowly as he walked past the last houses of the town. There were no guards posted, it would be pointless. Wraegn had no walls, and therefore no real way to keep people inside or out. But he still had to be cautious. He almost remembered an old proverb, something about the first time you didn’t check being the last time, but his mind failed to grasp it, and he wandered on, alone. He kept listening for the jingling trot of the church soldiers, kept looking back for a red-feathered helm waving in the air as it marched towards him quickly, but there was none. The church soldiers must believe he was still in the city. Dan’r thought he might have escaped.

  He wasn’t alone on the road of course, just alone in his mind. On either side of him the refugees were going in and out of the city. Refugees that had already been in the city for a time would turn off to the right, into the steadily growing warren of tents that stood just outside the city. There were hundreds of them now, and the number was constantly growing. The refugees would enter the city and see there was nothing there for them, then the army would put them up outside the city in old, partially ruined tents, and leave them. Somehow Dan’r never wondered how long they would last there, with no food, no income. How long would it be before the combined poverty of thousands led to riots and slaughter. All Dan’r noticed was that eventually, after a good three quarters an hour of walking, he was the only one on the right side of the road.