The Hollow March

by Chris Galford

  They did not go far that first day. The woods were too thick, the ground still too slick from the night’s showers. By day’s end, they had only covered a few miles, and from Rurik’s understanding, his brother was furious about it. He made sure to stay far from Ivon’s tent, no matter how the wanderlust might grip him.

  The first day they still saw signs of life between the trees. A few deer, tails white as the ground beneath their hooves, darted past the lines and were gone. Teams of horses trotted alongside them, separated only by wooden fences. Ranches came and went between the trees, and at least one rancher came out to offer his brother a hot meal.

  By the fourth day, they saw no such signs. But the march also eased.

  The hills began to dip to their favor, until they flattened altogether, and they found themselves upon the vast plains of the Empire proper. Trees teetered out more gradually. They crossed paths with a few lumbermen, but they bowed their heads to their work and said nothing to the soldiers as they passed.

  Sometime in the night, Chigenda reappeared. One moment Rurik simply looked up from his slumber and found him striding from the trees. The Zuti slid into camp and lay down with them beside the fire without a word of greeting. In the days to follow he would not be the only armed man to join the march. No one seemed to give it second thought, even for a Zuti.

  Their pace increased in the daylight, as the sun warmed them and battered at the frost. Night came quickly in these late days, but Rurik was thankful for it. He was not accustomed to a march, and especially not a forced one. His days on the road had always been of a more relaxed fare. The night meant sweet slumber, and a time for precious conversation.

  Essa and he would walk through the camp, hand-in-hand. They sometimes stayed up late into the evenings, talking and flirting and kissing in the warm seclusion of their tent. Often, however, they did little more than crawl into one another’s arms and drift away to sleep. Exhaustion got the better of them both.

  Alviss and Chigenda seemed more accustomed to the road, but then again, they always had. The Zuti still said little, but on occasion when he caught Rurik staring, he would give him a respectful nod. Like a silent thank you. He seemed a touch softer than he had before, at least to Rurik.

  No one noticed the Zuti, and if they did, they either knew enough to leave it alone, or simply did not care. The band quickly discovered Chigenda was not the only Zuti, though. That was a sour note. The other Zuti in camp was a eunuch man-servant to Orif of Kellsly—the captain of the Gorjes.

  Essa tried to speak to the servant one night, only to find that in addition to being castrated, he had no tongue. They refrained from sharing that bit with Chigenda.

  Snow became grass again as the sun rose and beat down on the otherwise relentless winter chill. Their tents were swimming when they woke in the mornings, though the ground was still hardened by frost. The plains were yellowed and brown, dead beneath the cold. The horses bayed bitterly, but then someone would attend them and bring them food, and they would quiet again.

  The rest of them were not so fortunate.

  They had enough food to get them to the camp at Erkitz. However, they did not have enough food to eat well. Each man was given water in the morning, with a handful of dried bread. They would eat again when the march concluded in the evening, dining on a small repast of soup, cheese and more bread. Soldiers guarded the supply wagons and let no one near.

  As they skirted the northernmost tip of the Surinian border and passed into the province of Momeny, they watched mountains rise beyond the river to their east. The tips were white and shrouded by grey. Storm clouds gathered overhead, and threatened to descend on them.

  Sometime in the night, they did just that.

  The days after were a stone grey haze, dappled by sheets of white. The ground vanished and rose beneath their feet. First the soles of their boots vanished, then the toes, and on it went until the boots themselves only just transcended the snow.

  Villages and hamlets rose in the distance and passed them by again, smothered in the white. Smoke and fire beckoned from afar, but only rarely did they see another living soul. Ivon forbade any man from breaking camp and venturing into town, lest they be tempted not to return.

  But of the dead, they saw their fair share. Bodies dangled from trees and posts—thieves and bandits all. Once, they happened on a crowd of serfs pitching back and putting shovel to frozen earth. Two bodies lay beside them. One boy, one girl, and they were of an age—children, no more than ten years from their first name day. They were grey, swollen with plague and fever and thirst.

  Essa choked and could not watch them. The men watched them from the grave, and the army passed on in wretched silence.

  At two weeks, the snow stilled again. That night, Voren snuck some ale into their camp, and they drank themselves to a stupor. In the morning, they found civilization.

  It was little more than a tower and a few houses, but it was enough to hold a knight, apparently, for the man and his meager retinue rode out to treat with Ivon. Women from the town were permitted amongst the camp, and they brought with them bread and milk. It wasted sweeter than any ale might.

  They camped there that night, as Ivon dined with the knight and his family. Men were forbidden to take women to camp, but Rurik still glimpsed a woman or two from town creeping between the tents.

  He had Essa, so he did not set to the hunt.

  The knight joined them on the morrow. Ser Lenesby, they called him. The pigeon knight. He and his men had been waiting for a group to attach themselves to.

  From there, at the hamlet of Immesberg, they moved unimpeded across open plains for three more days, neither rivers nor mountains nor even hills to fen them in. Then it was simply there, growing larger every hour—the teeming hordes, stretched forth in colorful mass across the earth, nigh unending beneath the pale sun.

  Two distinct cities seemed to have sprang up from the dirt, the latter ringed with stake and wagon, and bristling with steel, the first writhing with the colorful masses of the men and women that always clung to such great upheavals. Whores brayed at them brazenly as they rode through the hoof-beaten paths. Smiths put back and hammer to anvil. One man hastened up alongside them and, with a doff of the hat, introduced himself as a purveyor of all their tobacco needs. His smell was all the credentials he needed. A team of amiable dogs met them at the outskirts and followed them to the more martial borders. Rurik had the feeling of a great whale opening itself up to swallow them whole—and then they were consumed.

  They crossed a wooden palisade and rode into a throng of tents and men, crawling over the earth in such mass that no snow remained upon the rigid dirt. On that day, they rode into the camp Erkitz, and into the war.

  * *

  They were making good time. Better than anticipated, if the tracks were any indication. And if there was one thing Roswitte had learned in her many years upon this world, they always were.

  At last, they were catching up. Despite her boasts to Lord Matair, the way had not proven quite so easily mastered as she might have hoped. As in much of their trek, the ground was beaten down by the roving boots and hooves of several hundred armored men and horses. However, ice and snow still made pursuit a sloshing, sluggish endeavor.

  But the question of whether they would catch them had never been in doubt. It was merely a matter of when. Roswitte preferred the sooner the better. Her lord’s note to his sons rode like a weight in the waist of her pants. Fallit would have been content with any excuse to spend more time alone with her. Or so he said. He understood the gravity of the situation. He merely liked to jest.

  What had changed now—to the rangers’ eternal gratification—were the droppings.

  Many things could be hidden on the road, but excrement was a constant, and in the winter, she did not have to fret about the sun baking it prematurely dry, or the rains washing it away into some distant bank. As long as one could find it amidst the blankets of snow, one could tell approximately how far their quarry h
ad gone.

  Most were frozen. Hardened by the morning frost. This was still moist and yielded readily to her boot. Less than a day away, perhaps. It had been the greatest buoy to her spirits since they had first departed from the manor. The image of her lord’s solemn silhouette still leaned against the window of her mind. So weathered. So beaten down. This was the image of a man that had seen into the whims of fate.

  Swinging back into the saddle of one of Lord Kasimir’s horses, Roswitte called Fallit back, and the both of them rode off again, following in an army’s footsteps.

  Fallit rode alongside her, making a show of scanning the shadows while sneaking furtive glances at her. “How sad,” he said after a time, “what bittersweet reward is this? We draw so near to home, and yet I find no joy in the going.” He shifted in his saddle, adjusting his bow over his shoulder as his horse rumbled beneath him.

  “There is still the trek back. Focus now,” she shot back.

  He grinned at her toothily, the implications apparently agreeing with him. She did not return the smile. Now was not the time. Message first. Lechery later. She frowned as they banked around a sapling that was pressing through the middle of their path. Lechery not at all. That wasn’t right.

  So long as the woods bloomed around them, she would be worried. They had left the very night the Inquisition made its decree, and she hadn’t stopped worrying since. It didn’t help the mountains loomed so near. Surin’s cap, just beyond the river. To be so near to that country at such a time as this was foolhardy, to say the least. At peacetime, they were no threat. The power and the light had long ago gone out of the Kingdom of Surin. In war, though, raiders were not so uncommon. Desperate bandits, as well. Not all of the Empire’s troublemakers came from within.

  “You worry too much,” Fallit said. “Out there, we would see them come for miles.”

  Except in the snow. When the sky opened up and the crystalline flakes rained down, even the plains seemed altogether claustrophobic. Grey hemmed them in. The sky stretched on for miles and miles—an endless wall—but the earth hazed and fell away. There were the tracks. All they needed to follow were the tracks.

  They were half-a-day from the army at most, and nearly free of the woods when a cart loomed out of that very haze. Fallit saw it first, and with a shout both pulled up short on the reins, drawing their steeds to a bucking, neighing halt.

  All was quiet. It was only a little further to the open plains. The trail went forward—the cart was still mostly on it. It was possible to simply press around it, but they would have to have been obvious in the effort, for the snow was heavy between the trees. It was obvious in turn that the wagon had been plundered. One wheel was crumbled on the ground beside it. From the way it leaned, it seemed an axle might have snapped as well.

  “One of the army’s?” Fallit asked. Roswitte shook her head, scanning the woods.

  A lone dog sat with ears and head lowered to the ground, its tongue lapping affectionately at a body in the snow. There was nothing feral in the creature’s movements. The man, lying face down in the chill, had obviously been its master. Most creatures might have wandered off by now. If Master Isaak had taught her anything, though, it was of the loyalty of these animals. Even unto death, the dog knew its master. Loved him, if treated the same. Guarded him, if guarded in life. Whimpered and whined and sank into the dust, to follow him into death.

  Alternatively, a poor master often found himself gnawed on by that very creature, if he had left nothing else for it to turn to. Post-mortem justice. Cruel, but efficient, and at least the dog wouldn’t starve.

  She started forward, but Fallit put his hand on her arm and stayed her. “Don’t,” he said. She glanced back at the cart. The dog had turned to her, its hindquarters rising, ears perking ever-so-slightly. It was still deciding whether they were friends or foes. Shrugging off her fellow ranger’s worries, she trotted toward the wagon.

  “Watch the trees.”

  “Why don’t you?” Fallit said urgently, catching swiftly up to her. She stopped, glowering at him. He smiled, handed her the reins to his horse, and swung off into the drifts. “If we are to do stupid things, let me be the one to bear it. It is what we sad and sorry fellows were put here to do, after all.” With a wave, he jogged toward the corpse and its guard dog.

  Roswitte steadied herself on her steed, holding both reins in one hand and unslinging her bow with the other. Until they inspected the body, it was impossible to tell how long ago the attack had happened, yet whoever had done it must have had precious little time to make their move. Only a handful of hours lay between them and an army.

  As Fallit approached the corpse, the dog hunched down, baring teeth and bunching fur as it began to growl. Fallit approached slowly, reaching back into one of his pouches and producing a dried piece of venison. He waved it in front of him, saying something to calm the frightened mutt. Then he tossed it over its head.

  As the meat disappeared into the snow, the dog barked once, in warning, but curled back and scrunched its nose to sniff at the air. Another wary glance at Fallit, and then it bounded off to find its waiting treat. The woodsman took the opportunity to cautiously close the distance between himself and the dead man.

  He started to circle, but his confusion was evident almost immediately. Roswitte kept careful watch on the surroundings, but her gaze kept drifting back to him. Nothing stirred, save the snow. No shadows loomed. She looked to the tracks, following the trail off into the north. They would need to move on soon. There was nothing they could do for the dead man. If she had the time, a proper burial would have been in order, but their time was pressing, and the ground as solid as rock. They would have to leave him for the wolves.

  Her eyes settled on the tracks, trailed them to the wagon, and stopped. She looked down and around, followed them back behind her, toward Verdan. There were many sets of prints, and many wheel tracks as well, but none led up to the wagon itself.

  Alarmed, she glanced back, narrowing on the wagon as Fallit drew his sword, scrutinizing the ground around. More tracks from the soldiers, but nothing led away from the wagon. No signs of haste. No flurry of footprints. No blood. The snow could account for some of that, but not all. There would be something. Signs of unloading. Signs of a struggle. Something to mark the earth. There was nothing.

  They called to each other in unison, Fallit giving the “dead” man a boot. Snow sprayed as the man grabbed at a thick club, and swung it clumsily at Fallit. The corpse scrambled, but the alerted ranger struck him down with ease, covering the winter with red. The dog barked and sprang. Fallit turned on it, guided by adrenaline and momentum.

  Roswitte twisted in her saddle as a cry came from the trees. Half a dozen men were sprinting from either side. Cursing, Roswitte surrendered Fallit’s mare with a slap on the rear. The beast took off with a confused whinny as the ranger reached back to notch an arrow to her bow. She made a quick draw, drew a beat on the nearest man to her right side, and loosed. The arrow thudded under the bandit’s collarbone and he toppled with a yelp, rolling under his trampling companions.

  Roswitte twisted back, shouting for Fallit as she fired an arrow off to the left. It grazed another man’s shoulder. He grabbed at the wound, but ran on, rushing directly for her. Her horse stirred nervously underfoot, but she steadied herself as she put another arrow to string. It launched with a twang and slammed into the man’s throat.

  Shouting. Between the bandits, she heard the dog’s barks, yipping, and roars from her fellow ranger. She dared a glance. The dog was bounding back for another leap, bloodied from some blow to the body. Fallit moved with it, even let it catch him by the arm. She watched him wince, but she knew what he was about. As soon as it had clamped down, he swung up with the hilt of his sword and caught it under its jaw. It yiped and rolled off in a heavy heap.

  A sudden thunk preceded an abrupt blaze through Roswitte’s leg. She shouted, writhing in her saddle as she looked down at the arrow jutting from her thigh. Sheltered between two pi
nes, a bandit was notching another arrow. She drew up and loosed on him in kind, launching an arrow high into the drifting snow. The man doubled up under it as it burrowed into his gut, but she watched in vacant horror as he managed another arrow first.

  The arrow darted across her and missed entirely, but fell so closely by her horse’s head that it spooked the steed into a panic. In that moment she cursed herself for taking the beast—it was not a war horse, but a messenger’s. She kicked it, tried to weather the panic and stir it into her own advantage, to channel it into a charge, but the animal bucked, rather than rode, and though she made it a few paces, she could not fire and maintain her balance, and in its fury, the cowardly creature pitched her from the saddle and hurled her into the snow.

  She hung for a moment in flight, and all she could see were the howling men, clubs and axes brandished, descending on them like some barbarian horde. Then there was the sky between the branches, and she thought for a moment that it was descending on her in some great grey shroud.

  She struck the earth with a thudding gasp, and the air burst from her lungs. Shaken, but not beaten, she tried to rise, only to scream as she found the arrow had broken in her. Biting down to beat back the sound, she forced herself to a knee, drawing up for a shot, only to find one of the bandits already springing upon her.

  Instead of falling back, she threw herself forward into a roll and kicked out, scattering the snow as she hit and taking the man’s legs out from under him. His own momentum carried him over her, while she rolled onto her side and struggled her short blade from its scabbard. Trading hands for bow and sword, she labored to her feet, leaning heavily to her throbbing left side.

  Another screamed in to her right. She caught his axe and turned it aside. Pressed, parried and swung low. The bandit skittered back and tried to chop her about the wounded thigh. As soon as he extended, she swung out with her other arm and cracked her bow across his skull. He tottered, but did not fall. She stuck him with her sword, and pushed him off.