“Maybe you shouldn’t wait,” she said, grabbing a cloth off a simple yet sturdy table. Turning to the pot, she grabbed the ladle inside and scooped out a large chunk of potato. She wrapped it with the cloth, then handed it to Alric.
“You might want to let that cool,” she said, but Alric would have none of it. He opened the cloth and tore into the potato. It was tough and slippery, but it was delicious. His mouth began to salivate as he wolfed it down. When he finished, he leaned back in his chair and tried to relax. He’d been in the grips of panic for days now, and for once he felt like himself again.
“Thank you,” he said, closing his eyes. He was so tired, and that tiny bit of food in him wasn’t helping him stay awake.
“Most welcome,” the woman said. She started rifling through her cabinets in search of something. Alric rocked back and forth, sleep inevitable at this point.
“Your name,” he said, trying to resist. “May I have your name?”
He heard a cabinet door slam shut.
“Go on and sleep,” the woman said. “When you wake, you can have both my soup and my name.”
Alric chuckled.
“You’re too kind,” he said. “Too kind...”
The fire crackled, its heat carrying him away into slumber.
Alric awoke to a wet cloth pressing against his forehead. He started, arms flailing. Without meaning to, he slapped the cloth out of the woman’s hand.
“I’m sorry,” Alric said, immediately overcome with guilt. “Please, you startled me, I didn’t mean to do that.”
The woman nodded, a frown etched into her tanned face.
“I believe you,” she said, bending down to retrieve the cloth. “Your supper is ready if you are.”
That he was. As his senses returned to him, he felt warm, alert, and ravenous. Alric joined the woman at the table, a steaming bowl already served and waiting for him. Taking a wooden spoon, he prepared to eat, but not yet.
“Your name,” he said. “I won’t eat until I at least know your name.”
The woman stared at him, and he felt himself being analyzed. Whatever judgment she reached, good or ill, he didn’t know, for she kept her weathered face far too guarded.
“Beatrice,” she said. “Beatrice Utter.”
“You have my thanks, Beatrice,” Alric said, and then he tore into the soup. Beatrice sat opposite him, saying little and eating nothing herself. Alric assumed she’d already eaten, or would later.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” Beatrice said when he was halfway through the bowl. “The way you were moaning, I was thinking you had a fever. Walking hungry and cold as you were, I’m still stunned you don’t. You must have been having a terrible dream.”
Alric swallowed as he tried to think of a proper response.
“I have nightmares sometimes,” he said. “I don’t like to talk about them.”
He slurped another spoonful of stew, the broth thick and meaty. As far as he was concerned, it was divine.
“Is it about the war?” Beatrice asked. “I know a lot of younger fighting men who still have nightmares. Facing off against the dead, or that dragon the mad priest summoned, isn’t something you easily forget.”
Alric chuckled. Despite telling her he hadn’t wanted to talk, she’d asked anyway. Stubborn woman. He had a feeling she often got what she wanted.
“No,” he said. “I never fought in the war. When Thulos’s army marched west, my village was close to the coast, too far from their path to be affected.”
“You were one of the lucky ones, then,” Beatrice said. She had a thin blanket wrapped about her shoulders, and she pulled it tighter. “Around here, we were safe from their initial raids. The call for soldiers afterward? Not so lucky then. A lot of good men joined King Antonil’s march to retake Veldaren alongside the angels. That first time, I mean, not the second one when the war was done. Those men, they fought the dead, they fought demons, and when they came home, they fought the shadow dragon at Mordeina’s gates. Far more than any man should endure, but endure they did, and now they wake screaming from the nightmares. Scars of the mind, I say. And just like a scar, it won’t be healing soon, if ever.”
Alric remembered listening to the stories after the war’s end. Much of it had sounded so outlandish he’d have shrugged them off as lies if not for the angels who flew about. Having the winged men around made it a lot easier to believe stories of demons and dragons.
“Can we...can we talk about something else?” he said. For some reason, discussing the war between the brother gods made him incredibly uncomfortable.
“Sure,” Beatrice said, leaning back into her chair. “Perhaps you can tell me where you’re going, and why you’re going there in such sorry shape.”
Alric’s spoon clacked against the bottom of his bowl as he thought over what to say and how truthful to be.
“Do you know of the blockade at the Bloodbrick?” he asked.
“I do,” Beatrice said. “News doesn’t travel often to me, but that certainly did.”
“Well, I crossed the Corinth into Mordan, and I didn’t do it by using the Bloodbrick. Lost all my provisions in the process. Past week I’ve been making my way north, relying on the kindness of strangers.” He met the woman’s blue eyes. “Strangers like you, to whom I am most thankful.”
Beatrice’s gaze made him increasingly uncomfortable.
“Must be something important for you to have done that,” she said.
“By Ashhur, I hope so.”
Beatrice rose from the table and gestured to the pot sitting beside the fire.
“Get some more if you’d like,” she said. “And then rest up. I expect you’ve got no coin on you, so for now, you’ll earn your keep by helping me about the place the next few days. Winter’s coming, and there’s lots to do to prepare.”
“I’m afraid I can’t stay,” Alric said.
“Somewhere important to be?”
There was no way to explain without explaining everything, and Alric felt too ashamed to do so.
“I only...” he shook his head. “I’ll help until I regain my strength, just a day or two at most. Will that suffice?”
Beatrice didn’t look happy, but he wondered if Beatrice even could look happy.
“Very well then.” She headed toward the cabin door. “I accept. After all, I’d hate to impose.”
The door opened with a loud creak and shut with a bang. Alric winced as if expecting to be shot with an arrow.
“No wonder you live alone,” he said, and immediately felt guilty. The woman had warmed him by a fire, fed him, and offered him a place to sleep. To repay that kindness with cowardly insults behind her back...
“I’m sorry, Ashhur,” he said as he returned to his chair by the fire and wrapped himself in a blanket. Back and forth he rocked, his full stomach spreading sleep throughout his body. “We’re all imperfect vessels, but you chose a truly cracked and dirty one for this task by choosing me.”
Beatrice woke him early that next morning.
“Chores to do,” was her only explanation.
Those chores were many, and took Alric all over the woman’s land. First came milking her trio of goats. Their milk was his breakfast, along with some vegetables she’d boiled before he woke. Along the forest’s edge she’d placed dozens of traps for rabbits, and they checked every single one, resetting those that needed it. Of the traps, only one had caught a rabbit, and Beatrice smoothly pulled it free, broke its neck, and handed it to Alric to carry.
While Beatrice cleaned and skinned the rabbit back at the cabin, Alric steadily chopped logs for her woodpile. The hours passed, and Alric felt himself sinking into the menial tasks. It reminded him of home, and there was something wholesome about it, a feeling of accomplishment no matter how meager the work. To the north of her cabin was a stream, and he traveled to it alone so he might bathe. Afterward he brought several filled jugs back to the cabin and stashed them inside.
“Just in time,” Beatrice said. “R
abbit’s ready.”
She’d cooked it over the fire and seasoned it with herbs from her garden. Alric tore into the meat. It tasted even better than the stew she’d cooked the day before. When he finished, he returned to his task with the firewood. With him planning to leave the next morning, he wished to do all he could to pay her back for her generosity. If he had his way, she’d not need to split another log for the rest of the year.
Come supper, Alric felt exhausted but whole. That a day before he’d fantasized about eating grasshoppers seemed insane now, a distant past of another man. Inside the cabin, he sat on the floor beside the fire, relinquishing the rocking chair to Beatrice. He had a few pillows and a blanket, and he used them to brace his head and relax, letting the flame’s heat wash over him. For a long while, the popping and crackling of the fire was the only sound in the cabin.
“You screamed last night,” Beatrice said, breaking the silence. “Not loud, and not long, but it woke me. You were afraid, Alric. Mighty afraid. I almost woke you, but by then you’d stopped.”
She glanced his way quickly before returning to the fire.
“What demons are you running from?” she asked. “Because it don’t seem like you’re running fast enough.”
Alric held down a groan. The woman wouldn’t let up, would she? But what was the point in telling her? She’d only mock him. A hard woman like her, she’d call him crazy, or worse.
“I’m not running,” he said. “I’m...traveling to Mordeina.”
“What for?”
He breathed in, let out a long sigh. To the Abyss with it. Beatrice couldn’t say anything any harsher than what his wife had told him.
“Ashhur wants me to go there.”
Beatrice halted her rocking for the slightest second.
“Oh really?” she said. “And what for?”
Alric turned so his back was to the fire and, conveniently enough, he could no longer see Beatrice’s frown.
“I don’t know.”
“Then how do you know Ashhur wants you to go to Mordeina?”
“The dreams,” he said. “Every night, I have the same dream. I think I’m in Avlimar. Everything around me is golden and beautiful. There’s a crowd of people, and they’re angry and afraid. Something is happening, an announcement, maybe a coronation. All I know is that it’s important I be there.”
Beatrice coughed to clear her throat.
“They’re only dreams,” she said. “And I can tell you right now that they’re nonsense.”
Alric did his best not to act defensive.
“How could you know that?” he asked.
“Because,” she said, “you say you’re in Avlimar? That can’t be. Haven’t you heard? Avlimar fell.”
The news hit him like a cold slap.
“Are you certain?” he asked.
“Very. I don’t go to town often, but last time I did, that’s all anyone was talking about. That, and the angels. Avlimar’s in ruins, so if you’re going there, it’s not a coronation you’re seeing in your dreams, but a funeral.”
Alric tried to tell himself it didn’t change anything. He only partly succeeded.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I still have to go. I still have to try.”
Beatrice scratched at the side of her face and frowned at him as if he were a disobedient child.
“Look, what you’re wanting to do isn’t wise,” she said. “Unease is spreading everywhere, reaching even my ears. This isn’t a safe time to be a stranger in Mordan.”
“Except I’m not a stranger here,” he said. “I was born and raised in Mordan. I didn’t leave until just after the angels began policing the lands.”
Beatrice let out a surprised grunt.
“What made you leave?”
Alric let his mind wander into the past, faces and forgotten places flashing before his eyes.
“His name was Nick Adams,” Alric said, letting his mind wander to the past. “A neighbor of mine. No one liked him. He had a weak soul, spent more time in the day drunk than sober. He couldn’t be trusted to repay his debts, and unless you dragged him kicking and screaming, he wasn’t one to help out even if a storm blew over your barn or a fire burned up half your crops.”
Alric drummed his fingers atop the floor of the cabin.
“His wife, Susannah, she was a pretty thing. Real pretty, and deserved better than him. She deserved me, that’s what I told myself. So if I saw her at the market, or walking by my home, I’d make sure to say hello, flirt with her a bit. Never when Nick was around, of course. I’ll spare you the rest, but let’s say we started sleeping with one another, until Nick found out.”
He paused, remembering that moment. Alric had prepared himself for a confrontation, looked forward to it even. He’d let Nick rant and scream about how she was his wife and then throw that fact right back in his face, tear down the man, tell him if he couldn’t keep his wife happy then he had no claim on her. But it didn’t go down that way.
“Nick came to me when he found out,” Alric said softly. “Crying like a child. ‘Don’t take her from me,’ he kept saying. He’d change. He’d do better. Susannah was everything to him, and if I walked away, he’d make everything right with her.”
“What happened then?” Beatrice asked.
Alric swallowed down his shame and continued.
“I refused. I mocked him. Insulted him to his face. Told him Susannah was mine, and if he didn’t want me having her, then he better do something about it. And so he did. He swung a punch at me. Just a single, stupid punch. But while he had his fists, I had a knife, and so I...” Alric wiped away a few tears that had built in his eyes. “And so I killed him. Didn’t mean to. I just wanted to win. I wanted Susannah to be mine, and I wanted this drunk oaf to get the abyss out of the way. I plunged that dagger into his stomach, and I didn’t even think twice about it. Not until he was dead. Not until I realized what I had done.”
Alric sat up, wrapping himself in his blanket. It’d been so long since he thought of that moment. He’d tried to block it out, pretending it’d never happened, but still he saw Nick’s face right before he died. Still crying. Still heartbroken.
“The town called for an angel when they found the body,” Alric continued after composing himself. “I went up to him the moment he landed and told him everything. Didn’t try to hide a thing. Told him of me, and Susannah, all of it. And then the angel gave me the chance to repent. Right there. I was expecting to lose my head, but I didn’t. He forgave me, declared me innocent, and flew away. A few weeks later, I packed up all I had and crossed the Corinth to make a new life in Ker.”
“Did the people run you out?” Beatrice asked.
“No,” Alric said. “They didn’t. I wish they had. Instead they didn’t care. Even Susannah, I think in time she might have moved in with me. But I couldn’t stand it. I killed a man, felt his blood spill across my hands, and no one cared. No one blamed me. No one hated me for it. Nick had no other family, hardly any friends. It all felt...wrong. I guess traveling to Ker was my own little exile, and now I feel like Ashhur’s called for it to end.”
Beatrice resumed her rocking, the creaking of the wood seeming to carry new tension.
“I think you’ve got nightmares because you’re letting your guilt eat you alive,” she said. “You won’t find anything in Mordeina, Alric. You won’t find anything in Avlimar’s ruins, neither. It’s been a long time since I had a man around this place. Not since Johnathan died eight years ago. So long as you’re willing to work, you can stay.”
She rose from her chair and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t waste your life fleeing nightmares. They drove you hungry and cold to my doorstep, and should you leave here, they’ll strip you down to your bones as you continue running. It isn’t worth it. Ashhur’s not calling you nowhere. You’re not a prophet or a priest, just a simple, frightened man who still hasn’t forgiven himself.”
She left him to sleep, not that sleep came easily, or w
as comforting when it did.
Alric left the next morning, carrying a basket of food and a handful of silver coins.
“You should think of coming with me,” he said. “King Bram’s army will march over the Bloodbrick soon. I know it in my gut. Invading soldiers don’t tend to be too kind to the fields and homes they pass by.”
“I’ll be just fine.” Beatrice told him as she stood in the doorway to her home. “It’s you who needs to be careful.”
She went inside and shut the door. Alric took a deep breath and took his first step west. It wasn’t until Beatrice’s cabin was long out of sight that he dared spare a look back.
“What in Ashhur’s name am I doing?” he wondered before continuing on, telling himself the dreams left him no choice, telling himself this was right.
Telling himself, again and again, that he wasn’t throwing away his entire life for nothing.
9
Qurrah knew King Bram’s army would invade long before the soldier arrived bearing the news. Excitement filled the air, unlike the previous few days of dull boredom.
“Does the king wish me to be at his side?” Qurrah asked the young soldier.
“I...he did not say,” the soldier answered.
Qurrah chuckled
“Thank you. Go on and join the rest in preparing.”
The man saluted and dashed away from the small camp Qurrah and Tessanna shared at the army’s outskirts. Qurrah turned to Tess, who sat with her head resting on her knees.
“Will we join Bram?” she asked.
“It’s either us at his side, or Karak’s paladins,” Qurrah said, shrugging. “I’d rather it be our voice whispering in his ear instead of theirs.”
“And if it’s both?”
With a snap of his fingers, their fire dwindled down to embers.
“Then we’ll shout instead of whisper,” he said. “It isn’t wise to ignore either of us, and Bram will learn that soon enough.”
The King of the Vile Page 10