The Fire and the Fog

by David Alloggia

  He cursed under his breath as the wagon jostled. The idiot driver had probably hit a rock. Couldn’t the fool learn to drive properly? The stacks of books around him swayed as the wagon continued.

  Staen couldn’t write while the wagon was moving, which he hated, but his mind never stopped working. He only had thirty two subjects left, which wouldn’t last him the week. The Meiter needed to send him more subjects. He had sent hundreds into the Fog, but none of them had come back out. He had almost lost a team of horses trying to have one prisoner pulled back out of the fog. Twelve horses couldn’t pull the man out. It was…astonishing. The Fog was strong.

  Strong and strange. It killed anything living it touched, slowly covering them and consuming them, but it ignored any inanimate objects. Trying to capture the fog in jars or flasks had proved useless. As soon as the container was pulled away from the main body of the Fog, it was empty.

  Fire held the Fog back, but could not be used to make it retreat. The Fog never seemed to give up ground. And it never moved with the wind either. In fact it only looked like Fog. Nothing else about it was the same. ‘Still, Fog is as good a name as any’ Staen thought to himself, giggling.

  Still, there must be something about Fire…something that made the Fog delay when confronted with its light, or its heat perhaps?

  Staen wished he could pace. He liked walking while he thought, but with the wagon moving; it wouldn’t do to fall. Embarrassing. Possibly painful. Certainly distracting.

  What was it about the Fire? Was it the heat, or the light, or a combination of the two? Maybe he was on to something here…he would have cauldrons filled with water. Heated and left, he would see if they halted the fog’s advance. If they did, it was the heat. If not…was there any way to test for light?

  The Sun’s light clearly had no effect on the Fog…maybe it was just the light from a fire? Which meant…

  Maybe it was Ragn, doing what he could to protect his chosen people. Maybe the Fog was some kind of enemy of Ragn’s, and Ragn would fight it through fires set by his holy people? Or maybe the Fog was sent by Ragn, in order to punish the unfaithful? Perhaps only true believers in Ragn would welcome the fire enough to be saved?

  Staen would have to send the theory to the Meiter. Theology had never been his strong suit.

  Still, if it was Ragn fighting the Fog, or Ragn that had sent it…maybe his subjects weren’t believers? Maybe Ragn was punishing them for being nonbelievers, or they weren’t strong enough to fight Ragn’s enemy.

  Staen would need someone stronger in faith as a subject…maybe the Meiter would allow him a few Priests. He would need at least 10, for controls, and multiple tests…yes…that would work.

  But rounding up priests would take time; time to ask for them, to wait for an answer, to wait for delivery. And for now, he had no time. He never had enough time. But he might be able to try something else…

  Staen lurched forward slightly as his wagon came to a halt.

  ‘Finally’ he nodded to himself, standing and grabbing his latest notebook as he walked to the wagon door. He had more thoughts to write now, as he always did after moving camp, but first…

  He opened the door to his wagon and stepped out to organized chaos. The caravan had stopped at what appeared to be an abandoned farmhouse. Probably abandoned anyway. Staen doubted anyone would have stayed when the Fog was so close.

  On the other hand, if the farmhouse were still occupied…he could always use more test subjects.

  He stood impatiently, looking out over the dry dirt of the farmyard as he waited for his desk to be set up. Two soldiers were struggling to pull it off the back of one of the wagons. Staen’s foot tapped impatiently, absently, as he inspected the surroundings.

  The subjects were led into the barn across from the farmhouse. A kick or two from the guards to get them moving. Having the subjects indoors would be beneficial. Easier for the guards to watch them. He had fifty men under his command, and the subjects, but he always needed more of both.

  Staen wondered absently if any of the farm animals were still alive. Some fresh meat would be a welcome change. He had given up testing the Fog with animals. They garnered him no useful information.

  ‘Bring me the Legnar’ he said to one of the men who had finally finished setting up his desk and stood wiping his palms on his uniform. The man saluted and trotted off as Staen sat and began to write.

  Staen hadn’t written out all of his thoughts from the trip yet when the Legnar arrived, saluted, and stood at attention in front of his desk. He didn’t bother looking up from his notes as he spoke.

  ‘I had some more ideas on the trip Legnar. I want…hmm…five subjects. And I want as many religious objects as you can find. Symbols of Ragn, idols, any of the holy works, as many as you can find among your men. Have them search the house too. Maybe they’ll get lucky.’

  ‘Sir’ the Legnar replied, saluting and turning to leave. He was always very curt with Staen. Probably didn’t like having to call him Sir. Ah well.

  ‘A moment, Legnar. Two hours, by the barrier. Bring the subjects and the items, and I’ll also want several cauldrons of boiling water. Say…four of them.’ He said, his quill continuing to scratch away at the paper in front of him.

  ‘Sir’ the Legnar replied, saluting again and turning away, his boot heel crunching a divot into the hard packed soil of the farmyard.

  Staen stopped writing for a moment, his eyes and brow furled in thought. He would need a control for the water as well…

  ‘Ah, Legnar, one more thing.’

  The Legnar stopped in midstride, turning at the waist to look back.

  ‘Make it six subjects please.’

  The Legnar saluted, and turned away, yelling some orders to his soldiers. Staen ignored him, and the rest of the noise as the camp was reset. He had notes to make.

  ***

  Two hours found Staen watching the fog, watching it slowly creep forward through the fields around him. He had half the soldiers with him, as well as the Legnar and the subjects, but he noticed them almost as little as he noticed the fields of some type of grain around him. The Fog always held his attention when he saw it. How many lives had it taken? How many would it yet take? Could it be weaponized? Controlled? It still had not touched Rognian soil…would the holiness of Ragn’s chosen land stop it? More questions. Always more questions.

  The first round of test subjects was in place. They had been chained by the ankle to stakes in the ground, so they could not run. They had also been stripped, as usual. Four men and one woman in this test. The men must have come from Heyle, as with most of his subjects. Maybe the female had been a camp follower? He rarely used women as test subjects. This one would be interesting.

  He was using her as one of the controls. She sat still, her naked back to Staen. Unfortunate. But she didn’t struggle, or scream. He wondered what she was thinking. Maybe she had given up? Maybe she had given up years ago? Staen made a note. He should find out about his test subjects. Any information could someday be crucial. Where they were from, what they did, what they believed in. He would have to have one of the soldiers conduct…interviews.

  Though, if one lived, he could ask them then. Ask them what though? Staen made a note quickly in his book. ‘Come up with questions?’

  The woman was still. The men on the other hand…the other Control was straining against his chains, trying to rip the stake from the ground. Many subjects tried that. It never worked. The soldiers had learnt to plant the stakes deep.

  The other three subjects were covered in all the religious tokens he had been able to find. One knelt on the ground, head in his hands, crying. They cried as often as they struggled. Another was struggling, trying to tear off the tokens that were tied to his body. That might prove a problem. The Fog was too close to send a soldier in to discipline him. They would have to tie the subjects’ arms next time.

  The last test subject was on his feet, yelling and screaming at Staen and the soldiers, straining against
his chain to get as far away from the Fog as possible. He was yelling something about Staen’s mother now. This happened often too. Staen ignored the man’s ranting as usual.

  Staen watched, and hoped, as the fog inched ever closer. It reached the rightmost man first, the one who had been kneeling and crying. Staen rose up slightly in his chair; his desk and chair had been placed at a suitable vantage point, and now he held himself tensed for that first moment when the Fog touched a new victim. The Fog was touching a man covered in holy symbols of Ragn for the first time…the reaction could solve everything.

  Staen could see the tendrils eke forward as they always did when approaching a living person. They touched the man’s shoulder first, and he jolted up, his sobbing cries replaced by screams of fear. He started to flail, tried to shake the Fog from his arm. It clung, thin wisps that had reached from the main bank of Fog growing steadily thicker as the bank moved closer to the screaming man.

  It was interesting. When his experiments had begun, the soldiers under him had grimaced, or turned away. Some had even vomited, watching the Fog reach the test subjects. Now though, now they stared ahead, emotionless. That too begged more study. He would have to make a note of it. What would it take to desensitize someone? And what could they be desensitized to? Violence surely, or at least watching it…but…committing violence? Could they be desensitized to food? To sex? Something else to study, after the Fog. If there was an after.

  The other subjects looked at the doomed man, tied to his post and slowly being consumed. They became more frenzied in their cries, in their attempts to break free. But the one touched just continued to scream. The Fog flowed over his holy symbols as it did over, well, anything else. And then a tendril reached into his mouth, then flowed quickly into the man, almost as if it were filling him. Then the main Fog bank…bulged, and surrounded the man. His screams cut off completely.

  It was what always happened. Every time. The Fog never changed, never took people differently. It touched them, crept over them, entered them, and then the wall would bulge forward, sit still a moment, then start forward again.

  The holy symbols had done nothing.

  Staen scribbled furiously, noting his observations, even though they were the same as the observations that filled a full fifty notebooks back in his wagon.

  The other men went the same way, screaming as the Fog overtook them. They fought, or yelled, or struggled. Even the subject that had been yelling so vehemently about Staen’s mother glared till the end. He quit yelling when he realized his fate was sealed, but he stood, staring back towards Staen and the soldiers, one lip curled, anger and disgust clear on his face. Staen was sure the man would have tried to rip the soldiers apart with his own hands if could have reached them.

  ‘Not that he will now, with the Fog wrapping over him’ Staen thought to himself slowly, almost smugly. There was no joy in watching his subjects used, no, but maybe there was some measure of satisfaction.

  Still, nothing had changed, this time or any other. The symbols of Ragn hadn’t helped. Staen started to order his desk packed up; they would have to move back further, prepare the cauldrons for the second round of tests for the day. Hopefully the heat would do something. He was running out of options as quickly as he was running out of test subjects.

  Only a lucky, half-hearted glance back at the naked woman saved his day’s experimentation; saved even more possibly. She was still sitting there, almost as if she were waiting for the Fog. No tears, no screams, she didn’t even yank at her chain, or move to the end of it to get away. It was like she didn’t care. And the Fog…it seemed almost as if it didn’t care either. In every other subject Staen had observed, the Fog would reach tendrils towards, grab them, cover them, and then…bulge out towards them. But the woman…

  She simply sat there. And the Fog bank rolled over her. It didn’t cling to her, didn’t flow into her mouth, didn’t bulge out when it reached her.

  And now Staen had no idea why. Something about her had been different. She could even still be alive in there. He had no way of knowing. But she was the control, so it couldn’t have been the religious objects.

  It wasn’t simply that she was a woman…he had gone through women subjects before, as rare as they were; they had the same, the normal, reactions. What could be different? He wished he could pull subjects out of the Fog, but it had never worked before. He would have to have them all roped though, tied to horses just in case. Could he have pulled the woman out if he’d been prepared?

  Could she have been with child? Would that matter? He scribbled furiously. He would have to interrogate the soldiers back at the camp. Maybe they had done things to her before? It seemed likely. He would find out everything he could about the woman. He would find a way to save all of Rognia.

  For now though, he still had experiments to conduct.

  ‘Move the camp back a hundred feet, and get fires under those cauldrons. Once they’ve boiled, put out the fires. We need to see if heat will stop the Fog.’ Staen said calmly as he stood and picked up his notebooks; the soldiers would move his desk further back. One always had to have a solid desk for good note-taking.

  ‘And don’t forget to throw the last subject into one of the cauldrons.’ He said, remembering. One always needed a good control for experiments.

  Staen hummed lightly, tunelessly to himself as he walked towards what would be the second staging point, wondering why the woman had been different; why she hadn’t struggled.

  ***

  Bit was angry. Furious, even. His face was probably the same shade of red as his robes. Furious.

  For the moment though, as he marched through the streets of Wraegn, he didn’t care. Sure, the people in the streets stared at the big priest, clearly fuming intensely behind his red cheeks, but his mind was more occupied in his long strides, and in replaying the conversation he had just had, than in any care for the people around him.

  ‘We need to talk’ Bit had said under his breath as his Alde passed him in the corridor. ‘Now’.

  Hil, his Alde, had looked at him out of the side of his eyes, his head bowed and his hands clasped together in front of his chest, hidden by the long sleeves of his robes. Hil had nodded, and Bit had fallen into step behind him, following him all the way to his office chamber.

  The Alde sat as Bit closed the door behind them, and turned to face his superior.

  ‘Yes, Bit? Of what do you wish to speak?’ He leaned back in his chair. The man was slim, gaunt; seemed dwarfed by his robes. He disappeared in them.

  ‘Alde,’ Bit started. He had spent an hour that morning thinking of what to say, and now he had nothing. ‘Something is wrong with the Army.’

  ‘Explain yourself, Bit.’

  ‘I’ve been hearing disturbing reports, Hil. Refugees being mistreated, being left behind or killed when they couldn’t keep up with the rest of a caravan. And Ragn knows, the conditions in the camp outside the city are already bad enough. No food, no order.’ Bit paused. Hil watched him silently, his fingers steepled on the desk.

  ‘Worse still, I’ve had reports of villagers being forced out of their homes by soldiers. Even rumours of farmhouses being burned down in order to force the farmers to leave.’

  ‘Bit, where have you been hearing this from?’ the Alde asked, his voice free from inflection.

  ‘From people I trust, Hil. What’s going on. Tell me, please.’

  The Alde stared at Bit for a second, weighing, judging maybe? Then he sighed, and looked down at his hands still steepled on the desk.

  ‘Bit, you’re a good man. A good priest.’

  Bit said nothing.

  ‘I’m going to ask you as a mentor, as a friend, to ignore this. Let these reports go. They’re not true.’

  ‘Hil, …’ Bit started, but was cut off as Hil looked up at him angrily.

  ‘As your superior, Rilden, I order you to ignore this.’ Bit noticed the change, from using his name to using his title. The conversation wasn’t going where he wanted, and
now his Alde was getting angry.

  ‘What do you mean ignore this? If our people are dying it is our duty to protect them!’

  ‘Bit…’

  He was yelling, he knew. But he didn’t really care. His temper was always a bit of a problem.

  ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you, Hil, but I will not stand by and let this happen. I will not let my people die.’

  Maybe not using his Alde’s title had been a bad idea. Or maybe it was the yelling. He yelled too much, at times. Eventually his Alde had kicked him out. Bit was still furious, still had no answers, and now had no-where to go.

  He stalked through the crowded streets of Wraegn, his red robes and red face affording some space, but still, the streets were tight. They had not been built with so many people in mind; so many refugees.

  What would he do next? Collect evidence and seek an audience with the Meiter? Even if he could gain an audience…if the Alde knew what was happening, then surely the Meiter did as well. The orders would likely have come from him.

  But where else could he go?

  Bit was no closer to deciding his next move when he felt a sharp pain in his side. Then another, and another. He looked quickly, but saw nothing but the crowd moving past him.

  His hand pressed to his side came away red. He stared at his hand a moment, confused. He’d been…stabbed?

  His knees buckled before he could sort his thoughts out.

  People passing him in the street stopped, stared. One came over to help him, wondering why the large priest was on his knees.

  Then Bit pitched forward, fell face-first into the cobblestone road. The last thing he heard was a voice yelling for the guard.

  III

  They hadn’t walked long before Gel started wondering once more why he was following the old man. Dan’r, or whatever his name was. True, that big of magic had been amazing, but…there had to be another explanation. He must have had the lute hidden…somewhere…and then pulled it out. There was always an explanation. Magic only existed in stories.