Escana

by J. R. Karlsson

  Ella pulled the blanket closer to her. 'He was true to himself with me right to the end, maybe it was I who deserved death, not him.'

  Jakob looked dumbfounded by that. 'So you're saying if I wanted to kill you, you'd do nothing to stop me because you probably deserve it?'

  She nodded.

  'What if I wanted to possess all that was yours, would you do anything to stop me?

  Shake of the head. So this is how it was going to go.

  'What if I decided to do nothing at all? What would you do then?'

  She looked at him for a moment, trying to gauge if he was being rhetorical or not. 'I'd think you were denying your true nature, in an attempt to convince me otherwise.'

  She could tell from the look on his face that he still didn't get it and probably never would, she cut him off before he could respond.

  'If you're not going to light a fire you shouldn't waste your blanket on me.'

  He stared at her with another question on his lips, then seemed to decide better of it. 'I gave you that blanket so you wouldn't catch a chill. I'll not sit in the warmth and have you freeze.'

  Ella laughed. 'Some warmth this is, feel free to try it out yourself.' She tossed it at him and wrapped her arms around her shoulders.

  Jakob flung it back at her in response. 'I told you, take it.'

  She sighed and curled up in half of it. 'How gallant. I'm still not going to let you sleep without a blanket. We can share.'

  He refused to join her. This time she hurled the blanket to the ground and curled up with her back to him. 'Have it your way then,' she muttered.

  She mulled over the words silently, something didn't quite add up in her mind. She had been expecting the typical responses that she could work with and dance around but had been given reason to pause on several occasions already. The speech of others had always been painfully apparent, yet here she had heard something different. There was no anticipating the next words, let alone the next actions of the man she was following. She had afforded him every opportunity to stop posturing and he hadn't taken a single one.

  She felt him watching her back, waiting for her to doze off. She was still no wiser as to who her companion was.

  20

  Jimmy

  Jimmy woke to a boot pressing him face first into the ground. It was still dark.

  'That's very kind of you to be my wet nurse and all, but it still doesn't explain what the fuck you were doing out here in the first place.'

  He tried to twist his head round but was ground into the dirt for his troubles.

  'What possessed you to follow us out here after a murderer? Solomon was no friend of yours.'

  Jimmy coughed and the boot eased slightly to let him speak. 'Your son,' he managed to splutter.

  Thom grabbed the boy by the curls of his head and jerked him back, veins pulsing on the side of his reddening neck. 'Don't you fucking call him that. What do you know?'

  If he told him of his speculations it wasn't going to end well, not with the history between those two. He twisted and turned anew but couldn't break the precise grip Thom had managed to foist upon him in his sleep. Panicking, he realised he had little choice in the matter.

  'I think he killed Solomon, I wanted to know why.'

  Thom frowned at him, his anger subsiding slightly into confusion. 'I heard he was your little buddy now, what makes you think he'd kill Solomon?'

  'He spent the night at the Chipped Flagon with Ella, he told me nothing happened but I'm beginning to think he lied.'

  The Warden seemed to muse over this new morsel of information for a moment. 'Makes sense, he came in bragging to me about upsetting some girl from the inn and fucking up the job I got him there. Damn fool child never appreciated a thing I did for him.'

  For the briefest moment, Thom's grip softened. Jimmy seized the opportunity, twisting out of his grasp. He flailed wildly and landed a punch to Thom's temple, knocking him off-balance.

  Recalling the arrow wound, Jimmy turned and ran, looking back to see if Thom could pursue. The older man initially struggled to get up, but his daze didn't last and rage flung him to his feet. He ate up the distance between the two of them with terrifying acceleration.

  Jimmy's limbs pumped wildly, taking on a life of their own, he could hear Thom's breath behind him amidst the pounding of feet, it was shot through with a cry. Thom had fallen, his leg still held him in thrall.

  He continued racing forward and heard the sound of something cutting through the air behind him. Thom's sword carved past him and clanged uselessly under his feet as he leapt over it.

  The howls were all that followed him now as he propelled himself onward into the darkness in a blind panic. Branches whipped at his face but only the thoughts of Thom catching him pervaded his every step.

  Somewhere in the back of Jimmy's mind, a small voice was telling him to slow down and analyse this, to realise that the Warden wasn't some mythical being that could track him down in the night before he made it back to Escana.

  The terror soon overrode that, startled by the wheezing sound that followed him everywhere he went.

  It was his own ragged breath, he didn't know what direction he was heading or whether he was being followed. There was something out here that shot arrows out from the darkness and killed all those that would venture forth into it. He had to run, he had to get away from it, he had to flee.

  He nearly tripped, staggering and catching himself on an outstretched branch that tore into the skin of his palms. If he had fallen then the creature most surely would have got him, if Thom hadn't divined a way to intercept him.

  Again the voice was insistent, telling him that he had nothing to fear but fear itself, that the tears streaking his face were blinding him from the path he chose. A path that led away from Escana rather than back toward it.

  Something gripped him as tight as any vice, squeezing his muscles into action long after they should have stopped, forcing him to press forward against his own better reasoning which was obfuscated by the thoughts of being caught, of being chased and hunted down and captured by this creature.

  A branch stuck up from the tree-line and snagged his ankle, sending him tumbling over head-first into the dirt. Dizziness washed over him as he tried to lurch to his feet, he couldn't stop now. They would find him if he stopped now.

  He staggered drunkenly onward, deeper into the safety of the woods.

  His head told him that made no sense, that the woods were precisely where the creature had come from and that the safest place would be back home at the Chipped Flagon.

  Again they seemed indistinct, as if someone else was thinking them and they did not merit recognition.

  Screams sounded from behind, a chorus of wild hollering that sent him gibbering on deeper into the woods. He knew there was no echo, that the noises had come entirely from his own head, but it didn't matter, he had to keep running.

  He stumbled again on an outstretched root and collapsed on the ground, the muscles in his legs rock hard as if in cramp.

  Dark spots swam before his vision, all to the sound of high-pitched laughter, before an even greater darkness took him.

  21

  Ella

  Ella awoke shivering in the morning sun. Her legs and back stabbed mercilessly as she groggily remembered the previous night. Too much ached again in recognition.

  She sat up with a start and looked around for Jakob, had he abandoned her to her fate in the night? The blanket slipped away from her. Turning round, she found him as she had left him the previous night. He had placed the blanket over her and had apparently watched all that time. The only difference was his back pressed up to the trunk of an old oak. He gave her a slow nod.

  'Good to see you're up and running. I picked some fruit overnight, it should be enough to last us until Urial, do you want to eat it before we get started or have it on the way?'

  Ella shook the cobwebs from inside of her head and stared down at the assortment of fruit at her feet, it was too ear
ly for more questions or his oddly cheerful demeanour. She picked an apple off the floor and tossed it wordlessly at him to still his tongue. In doing so she realised how hungry she was. When had she last eaten? The afternoon before the party?

  Everything that had happened finally hit her. Solomon was dead, never to return, he could never treat her like that again, he had no hold on her beyond the grave. Instead there was Jakob to deal with, a totally unknown quantity who seemed either emotionally ambivalent or deeply caring at times. What want had any man of her now?

  Trying to quash her stupid doubts, she grabbed the fruit and started marching off away from it all.

  'Well that makes my life a lot easier,' Jakob remarked from his resting place. She narrowed her eyes at him in confusion as he tossed the apple up in the air and caught it, smiling tiredly. 'I didn't realise you had decided to go back to Escana. Urial's this way.'

  She was glad he headed in the opposite direction so he wouldn't see the heat of mortification flushing her cheeks. She didn't understand how he had gained such poise after a sleepless night.

  They initially set a fast pace but the terrain started to slow them, then Jakob began to stop more often to get his bearings. The fourth time this happened, Ella knew they were in serious danger of getting lost.

  'Why can't you just admit you don't know where you're going this far from Escana?'

  Jakob finally gave up staring at the trees, their similarity had bolstered a false sense of confidence that had led him astray. 'You're right, I don't know where we're going. I haven't known where we've been going from the start,' his voice started to crack and he kicked a log in frustration, sending it rolling down into a ditch. Whatever previous confidence that had kept him moving had evaporated. 'Sure, we might just make it to Urial without the road, but even then the only way in is through the gate, even if we get inside before they can get word to the authorities, what are we going to do when we get there?'

  Ella conceded the point, neither of them knew what they were doing. 'We'd be better off heading back to Escana then.' She started retracing their path back to the river.

  Jakob stood incredulously behind her, not moving. 'Ella, where do you think you're going?'

  She shrugged. 'You're right, we're better off heading back to Escana and accepting our fate, we're just delaying the inevitable.'

  She knew from last night that he couldn't tell if she was being serious or not, that he'd be wondering whether she was just goading him into continuing or genuinely giving up. It seemed rather easy to provoke him.

  'I can't believe you'd think that,' he said, waving his arms at her. 'You'd take death over the chance of life?'

  She cocked her head at him. 'You were the one that was making it out to be pointless, I was merely agreeing with you. It is pointless, we should head back. Are you going to tell me you didn't mean that now and you're just uncertain?'

  Jakob rubbed his temples and let out a long yawn. 'I don't know any more, I want to go back and for everything to be as it was, but I know I can't do that. I can never go back, I don't expect you to understand.'

  She pushed the log back from where he had unsettled it. What a symbolic gesture, not that he'll spot it.

  She was getting somewhere, he was beginning to open up. 'You don't really have much choice, you just have to keep going, and I'll keep following. They might even have not started the tracking if they haven't found us yet.' She didn't believe that for a second. 'I know what it's like to be displaced from everything, if nothing else we can share that.'

  The sun peaked out from the clouds in a faint mockery of fairy tale imagery. All we need now are some rabbits and a rainbow.

  'Thanks,' Jakob said, seemingly at random.

  Ella looked confused. 'For what? I was just telling you what you already knew, you should listen to yourself more often.'

  Jakob smiled grimly. 'That's exactly what I'm afraid of doing.'

  She chose not to query the meaning behind that particular statement.

  The morning hours passed uneventfully with no sign of pursuit. Whether it was the river or straying from the path that had thrown the law off their scent they couldn't tell. Irrespective of this, the growing unease and tenseness of the silence dogged every step of their journey.

  Ella finally broke it a second time, if only to quell her growing anxiety. 'How did you escape the dog?'

  Jakob didn't look at her, just as she thought she wasn't going to get a response, he spoke. 'I ran.'

  'You ran?'

  Jakob nodded. 'Yeah, out of the farmstead, through the forests, out to the cave, it gave me time to think things over. Time away from everyone else.'

  Ella pictured the chase from the hounds that Jakob had suffered at the hands of Solomon, all because he had been caught with her. 'I'm sorry.'

  He stopped walking then. 'What for?'

  She shrugged. 'I could have told him to stop, that you hadn't laid a hand on me'

  Jakob looked confused. 'Would he have listened?'

  Ella stared at him intently. 'No, probably not, but I should have tried, like you tried your best to stop him, risking your life to do so for me.'

  Jakob smiled at that. 'That's the first positive thing I've heard you say.'

  Their path came to an abrupt halt at a vast hedge. Its height stretched upward as if trying to reach the clouds and its dark bulk seemed to extend for miles in each direction.

  'This is Shackleton's hedge,' Ella said. 'I had no idea it extended this far. That or we're horribly off course.'

  Jakob stared up at the vast growth, it cast a deep shadow over them that cut out any remaining sunlight. 'How do we get past it?'

  She shook her head. 'There's no getting past this thing, we have to go round it, and there's no way of telling how far it extends if it's already this far away from the main road.'

  Trepidation crept over Jakob's face. 'Looks like our detour has come to an end.'

  If travelling in secrecy hidden by the trees was bad, walking under the shade of the hedge towards certain exposure was even more unnerving. Hours passed and the ominous swaying of the branches cut through all reason and felt like a hidden enemy tracking their progress. It started off as a subtle menace, yet its permanence grew in their minds the further they continued. They kept looking to their left, waiting for someone to spring out and seize them. The lack of any clear cause of the hostile atmosphere beyond the hedge only made things worse.

  The air grew heavy and suffocating over time until a point where each hazy step felt leaden, just as Jakob was thinking of calling a break for the ailing Ella, the ground seemed to oblige him and he went sprawling over what seemed like an overturned stump.

  Ella leapt backward in shock, acutely alert of what they'd stumbled upon. 'Jakob, it's a body.'

  22

  Jimmy

  Jimmy didn't recall much of the night after escaping Thom's clutches. He had run until the aching in his body and the spinning in his head threatened to overpower him. The night had flashed by him in a blur of darkened road and aimless flight. Part of him had known that he'd have to go back to Escana, only to be confronted by Thom. It was being overridden by a primal terror over what he'd seen in the other man's eyes. The occasional drunken fight in the inn wasn't uncommon to him, yet the murderous rage he had witnessed would have been something entirely new and disturbing had he not seen it in Jakob's eyes the night before. Those who had warned him against provoking Thom had been entirely right, was Jakob of the same ilk?

  At some point near dawn he had decided to run from the road, crashing through undergrowth and feeling his way in the limited visibility. Something eventually caught his boot and he was plunged into a darkness far different than the one he had just fled.

  He awoke with a start as hands seized him by the shoulders. 'Come on you,' a familiar voice spoke to him as if from a great distance. 'Let's see if you can stand.'

  He collapsed into a sitting position, his head felt like it was going to split in two. This wasn't early order
s at the Chipped Flagon, he'd have got cold water thrown over him by now for being so groggy.

  'Where am I?' he muttered to nobody in particular.

  'You're in the woods just west of Shackleton's orchard and we have no idea how you got here.'

  He looked up. Recognising Jakob and Ella didn't ease his confusion any. He tried to piece everything together, but none of his memories seemed to point to his ending up here.

  'What am I doing?' he asked.

  Jakob looked at Ella nervously. 'We don't exactly know, we were hoping you would be able to tell us.'

  He shrugged comically, his senses starting to come back to him. 'I guess I must have fallen, there's some pretty tangled roots around here that someone as clumsy as me could fall afoul of in the dark.'

  'That doesn't explain why you can't remember anything. Do you even know why we're here?' Ella asked.

  Jimmy frowned in concentration, he knew there was something vital he was missing but he couldn't think of what. 'Beats me, a bit odd for a trip to the orchard together at this hour.'

  Ella immediately regretted the question and tried in vain to change the topic. 'What was the last thing you remember? Perhaps you struck your head on something as you fell.'

  Jimmy smiled knowingly. 'I'm sure you'd love that, take poor old dazed Jimmy and lead him down the safest path away from all the important conversation. You're going to tell me why you're here, then I'm going to explain why I'm following you.'

  He watched them squirm awkwardly.

  'We're fleeing,' Ella said finally. 'We're wanted by the law for murder.'

  Jimmy got to his unsteady feet, half-expecting a confession. The night with Thom had come back to him now, there was no doubt that they had something to do with Solomon's murder. 'Why don't you tell me exactly what's going on and we'll take it from there.'

  In turns they gave him a rough account of the events after Solomon's death, Jimmy listened on in horrified attention, questioning every detail and event.