The Hollow March

by Chris Galford

  And when all was done, and Rurik was left alone, for the first time in a long time he lay his body down and cried himself to sleep.

  Chapter 16

  Decree said there was to be no drink, save the watered down wine the soldiers called Ramil, and drank in lieu of water they could not rightly trust. The day to march came and went amidst a hail of freezing rain, and after four days, they were put to march upon the morrow. All the while, Rurik spent his time beneath the influence of the banished drink, all too eagerly supplied by their baker’s agile hands.

  In those days, Essa found him a careless, muddled mess. It disgusted her, but she was not about to leave him for his brother to find. Though she disdained of his addiction, she often found herself partaking of the same. It seemed to placate him, at least, and it kept him where she could be certain he would find no trouble. Fortunately, while some still slept in tents huddled amongst the city streets, or even yet upon the fields beyond, Ivon had relegated them to a small tavern near to his own home, in the city’s northern districts. It was not much, but it allowed her to keep him confined and under constant supervision, even when she was not about. The Brickheart called on them once, hoping to speak with Rurik. She told him Rurik was ill, and prayed it would put him off until his ill humors had passed him by. As yet, it seemed to have sufficed.

  In the presence of his friends, Rurik kept jovial enough, but it was an easy thing to impersonate when one spent hours at the bottom of a mug. Essa had heard about his father when he had, and she could not begrudge him for the need to drink, only that he did. She could not rightly confront him about it either, for fear of what he might do without such a crutch to hold him up. Rurik drank to keep the demons at bay, and though he claimed he was alright, Essa knew the charade was in part to make himself all the sweeter for his sweet.

  She even found herself defending his actions to the others. Chigenda was cruel, but Alviss was persistent. Time and again she had to convince the old man to give Rurik one more day, one more outburst. Alviss wanted to push him, to get his mind off it with work and repetition. Alviss wanted him to continue training with Rowan. She relented but once, and it was a miserable experience for all. Rurik didn’t have the heart for it, and it was like watching a child in the ring. Alviss continued to press, but she pushed back. Some things just took time.

  In the day, she rode out with Rowan and Chigenda, trudging through the snow in search of any sign of encroaching hordes from beyond the horizon. Other scouts, riding even through the tumultuous storms of previous days, had assured them the Effisians were as trapped as they, bogged down by the winter’s cruel advance. Yet it never hurt to keep an eye out. For their captain and the others riding that grim expanse they had excuses prepared for both Rurik and for Alviss, who had lingered at their home to coax the boy through yet another ragged morning hang-over.

  As Chigenda moved to check the rises beyond the encampments, Rowan pulled Essa aside for a word. She considered saying something to the Zuti, but he preferred his quiet moments with the wind, and they knew they would find nothing. It was best simply to let him go.

  Rowan looked grim. Essa knew what would come then. Her cousin hated playing the cruel man—the bearer of bad news—and it always showed.

  Before he could speak a word, she told him, “The answer is no, Rowan.”

  “He will drink himself an early death, going as he is,” Rowan countered, unphased.

  “Best he quash his ails now, before we put upon the march,” Essa said, nudging her horse forward along the walls.

  “I would not—”

  “Then do not,” she cut him off. “Leave him be.”

  “But—”

  “Just let him be. We all have our ways of coping.”

  She said as much, but Essa could not help herself against the memories his drowning stirred. Rowan, perhaps realizing it, let the topic drop, and trotted sullenly behind her, shifting his attentions toward the Zuti and his slow ascent into the white sea. Rowan would never willingly remind her of the past. He had spent too much time trying to help her forget it. They would go on as such until the end of days, with the silent acknowledgement between them that there were certain injustices in life that could simply never be forgotten.

  When they returned to him that evening, Rurik smiled at Essa from behind the lip of another mug, and when he rose to embrace her, his breath already stank of ale. His ruffled hair and sparsely prickled chin told her he had only recently woken, a suspicion that Alviss confirmed. Pressing for a need to relieve herself of both bow and quiver, she managed to escape to her room and steal a brief reprieve on her bed. She took a moment to compose herself, and to breathe against the coming storm, and then she rose and returned to her fool, to join him as he sank.

  Though Rurik smiled at her, and she to him, with every quaffed mug she sat a little more on edge. The body sighed itself into relaxation, but the mind tensed, resistant. The ale burned, searing a poor taste onto her tongue. Yet she drank on, trying to grind out her own disgust on the roof of her mouth.

  It was a disgust borne of memory. Once upon a time, her father had the same glazed look to his eyes. He did not smile, and his cups did not give him the mirth it did to them, but it had given him the means to forget. In pursuit of that fleeting bliss, Essa had watched a once proud man degrade himself by the gallon. First, in honor of the wife that had left him. Then for the daughter she had left behind. It had promised much, but never gave Pescha what he wanted. Merely destroyed what he had. It did it inch by inch, but it claimed him, as sure as any arrow. The man drank the drink and then the drink drank the man.

  When she was little, it had been his evening satisfaction. A way to lose himself after a hard day. Pescha had honor then, and a name for himself. It was what gave her Rurik. Evenings became days, though, as the hours lengthened and his moods darkened, until there came the days—inevitable, really—that the little girl awoke to find a father already deep within his cups. Her punishment for being born was to take care of the mess those cups left behind. They brought her bruises, first of words, then of fists. It was hard for Pescha at first, and she watched his own actions wreck him. Yet with every doing, it only got easier. In a way, it was her own fault when he struck her that first time, or so Essa told herself. She tried to take his dependency away from him by force. She took a bottle and smashed it against the wall. Her father struck her so hard she pissed herself—a little girl no more than eight years old. She had a black eye for days after.

  Some bruises never went away at all.

  Pescha had drank to forget, and he drank until he forgot himself. Then he beat her in an effort to beat out the images the alcohol could not reach. In her, he saw the wife and the life that had left him. The drink was a bloody thing, in many ways.

  There was a time she swore she would never drink. Essa could think of those days and laugh now, until bitter tears would dribble down her cheeks. It was so easy to say at the time, before her blooded age. Then there was the uncertainty of adolescence, when her cousin and she took to the road on the hunt for coin. Then there were the taverns, where Rowan and she made their living. Pescha was gone by then, to whatever distant trail carried him off, but she was older as well, though none the wiser. Men sought to drink with her, and she relented. Gods, and it was a terror of a thing to put down after that.

  She smiled at the horror of it. Everyone was trying to forget something, but they could never seem to find the way to do it. All they ever seemed to do was make it worse. Such quiet madness, the masses led.

  Perhaps she was no better. Essa trailed the rim of her mug with her finger, contemplating the paths that had converged upon this point. Death had loosed her but by hairs, as it had with them all. In a day, or a week, it could come to collect, in guise of bloody pestilence or steel, or even with exposure. A walk outside, and one might never be seen again. The whirl of white could simply swallow a person whole, only to belch them up again come spring. She would not be the first to meet such a fate on a cold winte
r’s night. She didn’t like to think how many of their manifest army had.

  Rurik rapped his knuckles against the table, startling her from her reveries. He smiled as he informed her, “You look far too serious, my dear.” Under the table, his foot nudged hers in a playful show, and she caught it between her own, returning his smile with a touch of venom.

  “And you look far too drunk, my dear.”

  “How might we rectify this?”

  “A kiss perhaps, would sober one and lighten the other. Unless you think you are too far gone for the task.”

  Her cousin glanced up at them from his stack of cards as he shuffled and broke them. As he spit them out across the table, in preparation for the night’s fifth round of poker, Rurik rose to his feet and made for the challenge. The boy stumbled slightly, for a shift of balance—already he was missing a boot, his hat, and the belt that properly held up his pants, the former won by Rowan’s hands, and the latter by her own. They would return them at the end of the night, but in the meanwhile it did make for a funny show. She herself had lost her corset, both boots, and the emerald ring that Rurik had stolen for her moons ago, in a vagabond’s show of his devotion. That one had gone straight to Rurik, of course. As had the corset, to the piquing of her cousin’s furrowed brows.

  Rurik reached her and fell to one knee as proper as a knight. One hand flashed daintily across her chest, to be met with a breathless gasp, as per her part to play, as her other hand reached out to his. First he kissed her hand and then, audaciously, her lips, pulling her forward to meet him, and finding no resistance to the act. Essa only released him when the door swung open and her bitterly cold feet began to burn. Rurik fell back, grinning, and she reminded him what a rude and improper lord he was.

  “That is why they banished me, I suppose,” Rurik preened. “No manners at all.”

  He slunk away as Voren strode toward them. Rurik rose to embrace him, but the baker skirted the gesture, putting him off with rushed pleasantries and slapping a mug down at the table for him. Voren slid another to Rowan, full of Ramil, and tarried only to scoop up the coins Rurik slid his way. Essa reached out to him as he passed, saying, “Voren, we need to speak—” But the baker brushed past with no acknowledgement of her. That pickled her, prickling the hairs on the back of her neck with a sort of sullen fury.

  It was not the first time he had ignored her. Ever since their victory celebrations, Voren had been cruelly withdrawn. When she did see him, it was but for brief, uncomfortable periods, where silence largely reigned and the discomforting specter of some hidden offense loomed high above their heads. When she tried to address it to him, he brushed it off as nothing. With Rurik, he seemed just as cold, though it was Voren’s own form of relent in supplying the boy’s addiction. He said he thought it might help. Essa wasn’t sure how much stock to put in that.

  “Essa, hold or discard?”

  She glanced up at the sound of Rowan’s voice, blinking in confusion. He pointed at her cards. “Oh,” she mouthed, hastily selecting a card and sliding it toward their keeper. He dealt another back, but held her hand as they exchanged it.

  “I think you have had enough to drink, darling,” he lectured seriously. “The both of you, as a fact. Let us sit a couple rounds before we take another, yes?”

  Rurik tried to laugh it off. “Oh lighten, Rowan, but one—”

  “But nothing, lord,” Rowan curtly countered. “If you recall, there is a brother to whom you are redeemed, and who will surely notice when you come about him, sauced, upon the morrow. This reckless—”

  “Lighten, would you not? Essa and I are both having a right proper time and it was the Emperor, not—”

  “—behavior achieves you nothing. If you do not cease this you will—”

  “Self-righteous ponce, you’re not—”

  “Excuse me,” Essa interrupted their bickering, slapping her hands against the table to be sure she captured their attention. “I am off, a moment. Please, be to puberty by the time I return. Alviss, you’re up. Assal help you.” She turned from them then, even as Rurik called after her. Essa waved back at him, assuring she would be but a moment. The resumed bickering at her back, however, only served as fuel to the anger sobering her strides. Her mind had focused, suddenly and likely fleetingly, upon the shape that fled her approach. Alviss reluctantly rose to take her place at the table—his hesitancy told her he would have rather accompanied her. Here, though, there would be no need of him.

  She came on Voren in the tavern’s kitchen, amidst a flurry of other hands. A few young women glanced up as she sauntered in. They quickly looked back to their work. Camp girls, likely, plucked from the camp followers with promises of shelter and food. Any of their lecherous fellow soldiers could have been the culprits, but they were as much to blame themselves. Everyone got what they wanted this way, at least.

  Voren eyed her as he heard her approach, but his lips pursed and his back straightened, and he turned away from her as promptly as she had come.

  Not to be deterred, Essa pressed bodily through a pair of serving girls to reach him, and twisted the surly baker about by the arm. Voren looked as shocked as she felt by her own boldness, but the ale was not about to let her back down.

  “What is this sudden coldness you turn on me, Voren?”

  “I know not what you mean. Please, Essa.” He tried to turn, but she had not released him, nor would she.

  “I dare say you evade me. Have I done something wrong?”

  Voren yanked his hand back from her. “You speak madness, Essa. You are a fool with drink. Get back to your merriment.” Then Voren did something he had never done to her before. He turned his back on her.

  Essa reeled back, feeling the anger burn hot in her chest. “Is that so? And this says why you’ve treated me with such horrid silence since our night of drunken rejoice?”

  “Essa, please. The girls—”

  “I don’t care what they hear!” She snapped, and Voren flinched away. “What have I done to earn this? What have any of us? You, Messar Voren, are either a liar, or simply cruel. You say you have no anger toward us for this,” she said, holding up his pinky-less hand for emphasis, “yet now you come around and act as a child in tantrum. Which is it? Or is it that you truly think so little of me when I drink? All’s hell and pity to you then, messar, for supplying it.”

  The baker kept his silence well, but when he glanced at her she saw the quiver in his eyes, the fear that hid behind them. Voren wanted to shrink away, into the night, and hide as he always did. His hands faintly shook as he fumbled for another of his hidden flasks. Essa might have spared him, if she was of a gentler mind, but he had pushed her to it and the alcohol blinded all sense of reason.

  Turning from him, she quipped, “You didn’t think me such a fool when it was kisses for you, baker dear. Another round. Then I’ve enough of you for the night.” She did not look to see his face as she strode from the room, the whores parting from her path.

  The anger had not died as she stalked back into the tavern proper, merely laid at a simmer beneath her thoughts. It warred with curiosity as she heard the whispers, and her ears burned with the sudden realization that in her time away, the men’s bickering had turned aside and the topic shifted to her. She moved slowly, in deliberate caution, picking her way between the tables amidst cheers from another group of soldiers. Her cousin was leaned over to Rurik, both teasing him and jilting him for information, in his way.

  “Oh but such looks, friend,” he was saying, “with such things, our little lord must surely be to the plow by now. If you are trying to spare our delicate sensibilities, then please, disperse, as we’re not all kempt by delusion, you know.”

  Essa inched a little closer, pressing a finger to her lips as she caught Alviss’s eye. His focus shifted back to his cards, and she came on as a gathering storm.

  “That is not—I know what you’re doing. Really. We’ve not—not yet rutted.”

  “Yet? Oh you hear this, Alviss? Yet, he says!
Oh, at least there’s the ambition.” Rurik was blushing deeply, but Rowan pressed on, sober as a bird, but grinning like a fool. “I dare say she’d be for it, old boy. You’d best be to it ‘fore her attention swings another way, you know.”

  “Darling,” she whispered at that moment, sidling up behind Rowan until her lips hovered just inches from her cousin’s ear. “You suffer from two great delusions.” Her arms wrapped around his shoulders as he nearly bolted from his seat. “One is that you can whisper softly enough that I won’t hear you. Two is that I am anything like these other wenches—or your dear purveyors of the Sodom. These fine, milky white thighs remain closed, thank you very much.” As she pulled back, she slapped him on the head just to emphasize her point.

  Rowan winced. “Darling dear, I was only jesting…”

  “And if I ever hear you talking of that again, I’ll cut out your tongue,” she talked right over him, ignoring his protests. “Is that clear?”

  He shrank from her, but nodded in that beaten down fashion of a lectured dog. She turned next to Rurik, but he put up his hands innocently, as though he had nothing at all to do with the conversation. She didn’t bother wasting the words. Sliding past him, Essa started for the nearest seat, then thinking better of it, swung instead to Alviss, prodding him once in the shoulder for his attention. As his eyes met hers she looked at the floor, feeling a sudden bit of shame welling up into a second front inside her, drawing up lines across from her anger. Alviss did not ask any questions. He merely scooted his chair back enough for her to squeeze in, and she sat herself on his lap, leaning back to swaddle herself in his furs as his arm came around her, like a father might hold his daughter.