Grimbald turned to him. “Sure, let’s go. I don’t think I want to watch this anymore.”
“Keep your good eye open, Scab. We’ll be back in an hour or two,” Walter said.
Scab waved him off, transfixed on the fires.
“Wait. You’ll get the others? On the poles?”
Scab narrowed his eyes, brown irises circled in yellows and pinks. “I didn’t agree to be your personal grave digger, but…” he clicked his tongue, “but we’ll take what we want here and consider it done.”
“Fine, take whatever you want. Not like they’ll be needing it,” Walter said.
Scab smirked. “You couldn’t stop us all anyway.”
Walter felt the embers in his chest flare with a violent heat. “Oh, you think so?” He leaned over in his saddle, close enough that he could tear Scab’s lip off with his teeth. “You don’t know what I’ve done, what I can do,” he hissed into his face. “What you’ve seen has only been a taste.” The Dragon flared in his eye and wisps of light curled around his head. “Accidents sometimes happen, you know,” Walter grinned.
Scab’s face was unaffected, as if he were staring at a block of stone. “Relax, my noble employer!” Scab burst out with laughter. “My man, you’re a serious fellow. That’s going to put you back into the Shadow Realm before anything else will, that I can tell you with certainty. Men like you,” he scoffed. “They don’t last long.”
Walter shook his head and sighed, letting the Dragon drain out. He noticed his shoulders were aching from scrunching them up to his ears and he let them relax. He jabbed Scab’s shoulder with his stump. “Don’t fuck with me, Scab. Don’t you think that now is probably not the time for fun and games?”
Scab tugged on his frayed coat lapel. “My sincere apologies. Humor is just my way of dealing with tragedy,” he nodded and met Walter’s eye with a sincerity he’d never seen in him before.
“It’s alright,” he sighed. “Apology accepted. Don’t forget about the other people, please. Ready, Grim?”
“Mhm.” Grimbald was staring at the pyre.
Walter and Grim set off down the Quarry road and their horse’s hooves kicked up puffs of dust behind. The cornfields that had once been a forest for him to explore were burned to stalks of ash. A few had somehow escaped the fire, bright green and swaying in the breeze.
Some of the houses they passed were still smoking from fires burning deep within their hearts. Others remained unburned, but in an almost equal state of disarray. Those unburned had their windows smashed, doors torn off, and walls hacked through. There was no order to their destruction. It was chaos in its purest form. Much like the cornfields, there was an odd house seemingly left untouched. What made it so special? Had they left it as a reminder of what life was like here once? He couldn’t fathom the inner workings of Death Spawn and thought it a fruitless effort to try.
“Hard to believe how idyllic things once were here. Feels like a fabled dream,” Walter said.
“A nightmare,” Grimbald corrected. “One with no obvious escape. Where no amount of screaming wakes you up.” He smiled with half his mouth. “That about right?”
Walter snickered. “Yeah, well, take one day at a time. All we can do, right?”
Grimbald grunted in agreement. “There’s a lot of people we can help. Have to look on the bright side.”
“Yeah,” Walter said distantly.
“This seems like it was a nice place. This was near where you grew up then?”
“Sort of. This is the poorer part of the town. My parents did well with the elixir farm. We lived farther south of the square. That’s where most the elixir farmers are…” he cleared his throat, “were. It’s also where I spent a lot of my youth. Soil’s good there. This was where Nyset and Juzo lived. Feels like a life I never lived. So much has changed, like it was never real.”
“It was real, though, all of it. Don’t forget it. Don’t let the good memories die.”
“Yeah.” Walter nodded, unsure of what to say.
“Is elixir farming hard work?” Grimbald asked.
“Sure is,” Walter’s eyebrows drew down. “Still have the callouses on one of my hands to prove it. Every year we had to till the earth, put down bone meal, new seed, keep ‘em watered and keep the bugs away. We earned our marks, no doubt about it. But we also were lucky with settling down in an area with such great soil. No one was growing elixir then because no one drank it. Once people learned that it helped with concentration, it took off,” he laughed. “I remember the day we had an order for over one hundred bushels from Midgaard. My parents were thrilled. My parents said they’d deliver the order, and they did. The rest is history… the orders kept coming from all around the realm, Midgaard mostly. We hired some help, expanded and grew until all the land we owned was nothing but grounds for elixir beans.” Walter smiled at the memory. It filled him with a comforting warmth.
“That’s nice, Walt. Your parents sound like they were good business people.” Grimbald smiled at him, seeming to share in his energy.
“Mm. They were.”
“My Pa got the Hissing Gooseberry from my grandpa. He started it when Shipton was becoming a place for traders when the routes west were cleared of bandits. I guess the Falcon wasn’t doing a good job patrolling roads then, or maybe they weren’t paying their taxes.”
“Or maybe the kings before Ezra were bigger bastards,” Walter smirked.
“Maybe. Anyway, my Pa took it over. Gutted it, added a second floor, dug out a cellar for beer barrels and wine casks. Some people that came through only came through Shipton in the summer because of how cool the beer was. At that time in Midgaard, beer was still served warm because barkeeps typically put them on floors above the tavern. Can you believe that?”
“Wait.” Walter stopped Kez and stared at his dead friend’s house. He had almost passed it by without a glance. If not for being one of the houses still smoking, he would have missed it.
“The customers loved the cool, sometimes icy cold beer and wine. The tavern would be packed in the summer. Was this Nyset’s?” Grimbald asked.
“No,” he said. His best friend was dead. He was buried underground, one with the earth and food for maggots. The wound of that accident had not yet begun to heal. He’d heard people say that time healed all wounds, but that was a lie. It was just something people liked to say to try to make you feel better after a tragedy. Or maybe it was just to make themselves feel better for not knowing what to say. It was fine to not say anything, he thought.
Grimbald cleared his throat.
The house was a burned out husk with just a few blackened timbers left standing. “That was Juzo’s house. His parents went looking for him after Terar took him,” he murmured.
Grimbald let out a pained exhale and his fingers brushed Corpsemaker’s haft.
Walter nudged Kez towards the path leading up to where the steps for Juzo’s house were. The prismatic flowers of the garden, still in bloom, had been trampled under many boots or by someone who had a strong dislike for flowers. Thick stems were split down the middle, yellow roses smashed into the brown muck on the earthen floor.
Walter dismounted from Kez and peered inside the shell of a house. Two blackened skeletons were in a lover’s embrace where the dining room would have been, if he remembered it right, which he thought he did. But did that matter? Maybe they weren’t his parents. Maybe they were visitors, friends passing through. Juzo’s parents were both short, seeming to match the profiles of the bones.
“No,” he croaked. “They’re dead.” He turned from the house and felt the world sway. He reached for Kez and gripped the saddle’s pommel for support. They could not hurt him anymore, he told himself. “They could not,” he whispered.
“Could not what?” Grimbald peered at him and wrinkled his nose.
“They’re dead. They’re all dead,” Walter said. The words felt heavy as stones in his throat.
“Shit. I’m sorry, Walt.” Grimbald gave his shoulder a squeeze.
He swallowed and his throat felt like it had been coated in sand. He started coughing, his face burning with the force of it. Grimbald put an opened waterskin in front of his mouth and he gladly took a gulp. “Thanks, Grim.” He nodded and wiped his mouth. “Should’ve expected this.”
“Not something you can ever really prepare for.” Grimbald took a gulp and swished the water around his cheeks before swallowing. “Even when you know what’s coming.”
“They’ve already been burned, nothing to do now but move on.” Walter swung his leg over Kez then inhaled sharply, steadying his nerves and the quivering world.
The quarry road wound farther west towards the Abyssal Sea. The air grew cool and the salty tang heavier. The jagged tips of the Denerian Cliffs rose up, obscuring the Abyssal Sea beyond it, like a monster’s mouth trying to pierce the clouds. Just west of the Denerian Cliffs, surrounded by sea water, the familiar trail of black smoke endlessly drifted into the sky from the mouth of the Ars Volcano.
They passed the ruined shells of houses smaller than Juzo’s, some might call them shacks, but Walter called them homes. Most people in Breden had lived comfortable lives without the specter of poverty that loomed over so many in the bigger cities. These houses, including Nyset’s, were the exceptions for Breden.
“That poor soul,” Grimbald groaned. A man had been bound by his hands and feet to a rusted over laundry pole in front of Nyset’s house. His arms were stretched over his head and ankles cinched together with rope. Mr. Camfield’s skin had been removed and hung to dry in the wind beside the laundry. It looked as if it might crack at the slightest touch. Most of the clothing was on the ground now and blown up against the walls of the house. A white dress and some shirts were snagged on the dead leaves of the surrounding garden.
Walter wanted to ignore the body for the moment and found the front door. The last time he saw the door on Nyset’s house, the red paint had been flaking off. Now just a few specks of red remained, some of it blood he guessed by the brown color.
“Uh. That smell — it’s horrible.” Grimbald pinched his nose closed. “Why didn’t they burn them like all the others?”
Walter exhaled and let his eyes drift to the body of Nyset’s father. His eyes had been removed like all the others. He’d been partly eaten by Death Spawn or Coyotes. It was impossible to distinguish the difference. Hundreds of Rot Flies crawled over his exposed muscles, tendons and sinews. Most of the muscle on his calves had been torn away, leaving porcelain bone behind.
“They knew. They did it to hurt us,” Walter said. He could not be broken, he told himself.
He dismounted and made his way up the steps. The wood creaked under his boots and the hinges squealed when he pushed the door open. The odor was like a punch to the gut. His innards convulsed with a gag. He placed his hand over his mouth, as if that alone would stop the incessant spasm.
He sucked in air and his eyes followed the trail of gore up the stairs. It was as if someone had taken a bucket of blood and hurled it from the top. It looked to have dried long ago; how long he couldn’t say. He placed a boot on the first stair and something crunched under it. He lifted his boot to find a finger there, smashed flat and wilted up like an old sausage.
He swallowed and took another step, his hand on the rail and forearm pressed against his mouth. Did he really need to see the body? He told Nyset what he would do it, and his word to her was everything. He gave a resolute nod and plodded up the stairs. His boots clung to sticky pools near the top. In another time, he might have thought there was a lot of blood here. He didn’t think any amount of blood would bother him anymore, not after bathing in it in the Shadow Realm. The thought brought a bitter smile.
“Less air movement up here,” he said into Stormcaller. Its cool metal was a comfort pressed against his lips. The odor was crushing and took everything he had not to vomit up the lamb jerky he had for morning supper. He pulled his arm away from his face so he could mouth breathe, not that made much of a difference.
The door screamed as Grimbald followed him in.
Something came into view near the top of the stairs. Severed legs, cut clean at the knees and resting near the edge of the landing. That explained all the blood on the stairs. Mrs. Camfield was propped against the wall at the top of the landing. What remained of her head lolled over and rested on a shoulder. Her once beautiful face had been hammered into an unrecognizable mess. He knew it was her by her hair, matted with blood on one side while golden and untouched on the other. The bottom halves of her legs were on either side of her, skin the color of ash. A wide gash had been cut across her apron, once white, now shades of brown and pink. Her arms had protectively wrapped around the wound, doing nothing to stop her organs from spilling out into her lap.
“Fuck,” he croaked and his hand wound into a fist. He couldn’t stop staring at her ruined form. He tried to remember what her face looked like, but couldn’t picture it. Why couldn’t he remember? He wanted to remember her face. He knew she was happy, innocent, undeserving of such a cruel death.
The distant groan of wooden boards reached his ears.
He turned to face Grimbald coming up the stairs. His face was contorted with disgust.
“Why can’t I remember her face?” he asked Grimbald. “She’s dead, but I can’t remember her.”
“Walter, let’s go. You did as you said you would,” he beckoned.
“I need to remember.” He could only picture part of her visage. He remembered her smile and the shape of her chin. Why couldn’t he remember the rest? He took a step towards the stairs and sat on the edge, backside wetting with thickened blood.
“C’mon, Walter,” Grimbald’s voice echoed in his head.
A powerful hand reached under the crook of his elbow and guided him onto unsure feet. He was moving down the stairs, he knew, but it felt like drifting through an ethereal dream. He felt the ground flit away and watched the stairs flow beneath him. Grimbald’s iron shoulder jabbed under his ribs. He reached the outside and closed his eye at the harshness of the sun.
Reality came rushing back with the fresh air. “Thanks, Grim,” he stammered.
“You alright?”
“Yeah. You can put me down now,” Walter said.
Grimbald gently lowered him with the care of a new mother. The strength of his body returned, but he still could not remember her face. “Why can’t I remember her?”
Grimbald shrugged uncomfortably. “Memory fades much too fast. I know how it is… it’s like trying to see your own reflection in a rippling pond. You know it’s there, you can almost see it, but it’s just not right.”
“That’s exactly it.” Walter nodded.
“Have to remember the good times. The way you felt then, even if the clear picture you had in your mind goes away.”
“It’s like that for you then too?”
“Mhm.” He bit his lip. “Same way with my Pa.”
“Suppose it’s the same way for me too, with my parents I mean.”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Grimbald huffed.
“Good idea. Let’s bury them; at least give ‘em that.” Walter turned to look at the flayed body of Nyset’s father, wondering how they’d get him down without getting too messy.
“We have time?” Grimbald scratched his head.
“We’ll make time. I promised Ny I would.” Walter’s voice cut in harder than he’d meant. “Sorry. Hard day’s all.”
“It’s alright. Let’s find gloves,” Grimbald started towards a shed and Walter followed.
Chapter 6
The Yellow Caverns
“Only time can heal the deepest wounds.” -The Diaries of Nyset Camfield
Walter and Grimbald took about three hours to give Nyset’s parents a proper burial. The worst of it was retrieving Mrs. Camfield’s legs and putting them in the grave beside her. Some of her skin had sloughed off in Walter’s hand and sent her leg squelching down the stairs. Cleaning up the remnants of the dead was a horr
ible task. It wasn’t the blood that bothered him, but how cold the skin felt. They left the blood and bits of tissue behind for the carrion insects. The hard work had fallen on Grimbald again due to Walter’s missing hand, making his shoveling a laughable effort.
Back in the square, all that remained of the funeral pyres were charred timbers and a mess of bones. Walter was surprised to see the pile’s overall size hadn’t changed much after all that burning. He saw why now. Scab and his men had obeyed Walter’s request to take care of the townsfolk who’d been impaled. Long spears stuck out of the blackened remains of the pyres like dark porcupine quills. Skewered on the lengths of wood were charred bodies. Some of the corpses seemed to be contorted with pain, as if burning them wasn’t enough to end their misery.
Walter was starting to think he could rely on Scab to follow an order. He was a farmer last year, this year a leader of bandits. Life sure had a way of dishing out the least expected of surprises.
“Where’d Scab and his crew go? Think they left?” Grimbald asked and peered around the echoing square.
“Maybe. Hopefully, they’re outside the town still,” Walter pointed at the horse tracks. “There.”
“They lead out. Mm. Scab doesn’t seem like the type to quit a job without getting paid.”
“Don’t think so,” Walter agreed. He didn’t think the square could’ve possibly looked worse than after it had been razed by Death Spawn, but it did. Scab’s crew seemed to have ridden off with everything that wasn’t nailed down. They had even taken the massive wooden bowl that hung over Casey’s store.
“It’s done then.” Grimbald wrinkled his nose at the pyres.
A section of light at Grimbald’s side shimmered and distorted the world behind it. “What is…?” Walter squinted and cocked his head at the strange mirage. Something long rose up from its center. Walter gasped, filled himself with the powers, and jerked Grimbald from his saddle with a telekinetic blow to his back. Walter tracked the blade of light, fell back in his saddle as it changed course for him. The blade chopped into Kez’s neck, cracking bones, and spraying the horse’s blood over the body of his attacker.
A New Light (The Age of Dawn Book 5) Page 10