The Brave and the Dead

by Robertson, Dave

  “Should we risk it?” Nammar asked. His voice was hoarse, little more than a whisper. “I don’t know if I can go much farther.”

  Gahspar looked the other man in the face. He was pale, his eyelashes and beard covered in a thin layer of white.

  If they pushed on, it might be the death of them all. If they stayed, the bandits would almost surely find them.

  “Let’s stay,” Gahspar said. “We’ll fight if we must.”

  They put the horses on the lee side of the hut, out of the worst of the wind. They fed and watered them, and covered them with their blankets. Gahspar and Nammar lit a fire in the small iron stove and slept on the bare floor of the little cabin.

  They awoke early, the fire having burned down to nothing, the cold seeping in to surround them. They ate, packed and headed out. No sign of bandits.

  They could see the top of the pass now. The road seemed to go up, between the mountains, and disappear into thin air. Mountains closed in on both sides of the road. Gahspar was glad to look right and see the steep slope of a mountain rising up next to him. It was comforting, a great relief compared to the prospect of falling off a cliff into nothingness.

  They passed another day bitter, bleak, and raw from the cold. Snow fell heavily, obliterating everything behind a swirling white sheet. The horses stomped through more than a foot of snow; by day’s end it was two feet. Their pace slowed and discouragement began to set in. It began to seem that they would climb forever, that the mountains would bat them around like a cat did a mouse until finally it killed them.

  Nammar stopped.

  “I’m afraid I’m not going to make it. You continue on, don’t worry about me.”

  He gritted his teeth as he spoke.

  “If you stay here, then what? You’ll die up here,”Gahspar replied.

  “The Gods have left us; even they don’t like it up here.”

  “The Gods take care of those who take care of themselves. Isn’t that the saying?”

  Nammar looked down at his saddle horn, his skin was white, his eyes sunken in dark sockets. He looked weak, defeated.

  “I’m not sure I know anymore,” Nammar said.

  Gahspar looked around. Snow covered everything, and more was falling. High peaks towered all around them, stark and unforgiving. He didn’t know what to do.

  He leaned over and slapped Nammar’s horse on the butt. It took two quick steps, then kept walking. Gahspar followed.

  Nammar rode with his head down, his body rocking with the motion of the horse. Gahspar called to him, but over time his low, mumbled answers turned to silence. Gahspar began to feel like he was riding with a ghost.

  High sun came and went. It was too snowy to see anything more than a slightly bright smudge overhead. Snow was still falling, swirling and clinging to them. It piled on Gahspar’s shoulders and on his horse’s neck. The horse’s legs disappeared into deep drifts, churning forward.

  Nammar’s horse stopped, and Gahspar rode up beside him.

  “Gahspar, I think I’m dying,” Nammar croaked. Gahspar had to lean close to hear him.

  Gahspar slapped Nammar’s horse on the rump again. This time it took one step and stopped. Nammar slid from the horse and landed in the snow. Gahspar dismounted and went to Nammar’s side. Deep rattling coughs shook Nammar’s chest.

  “Leave me here,” Nammar said.

  Gahspar picked him up, straining under the weight. He laid Nammar across the saddle of his horse, then mounted his own. He went forward, leading Nammar’s horse behind him. It followed.

  He stopped once and made Nammar drink some water. By late afternoon, the snow was deep enough that the horses were struggling with each step. Gahspar knew they were bone-weary, but there was no place to stop and no other place to go. All they could do was keep trudging forward.

  Some time later, Gahspar stopped to give Nammar more water. Nammar was dead.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Weather the Storm

  Lars Lorendon had the coin pierced and put on a fine chain. He hung it around his neck. It was the most valuable thing he had ever owned. It wasn’t a fortune, and in the inland cities it wouldn’t even make him wealthy, but by the meager standards of coastal life, the coin was a treasure.

  The next day, the chieftain started coming down with something. He had a persistent cough. Phlegm, or something like it, seemed to be invading his lungs. He went to bed that night with a deep, hacking cough that kept half the household awake. The following day he couldn’t force his way out of bed. He had much to do. He wanted to discuss this Vorus Blackfist’s terms with a few important men and get their opinions on what to do, but he was too sick. In the end, he alone would have to decide.

  The sickness made him postpone his meetings. Since he couldn’t meet with others, his grown son was his only source of advice. Neither he nor his son were eager to bow to this Vorus person’s will and both doubted it was worth the man’s while to send an army all the way to the coast to fight a bunch of sparse, scattered houses tucked away on beaches and cliffs from here to Vastgaart. If he did, it likely wouldn’t be until spring anyway, since winter was fast approaching.

  Chieftain Lorendon mulled his options.

  By night meal he was coughing uncontrollably. By midnight he was coughing up blood. He was dead by morning.

  That day, his son sent a messenger to Vorus Blackfist pledging his support and accepting the necromancer’s terms.

  Gahspar knelt in the snow, unsure what to do. He was alone now, more alone than he had ever been. Death seemed to be everywhere. It stalked him in the forests, it fought him in the towns and it followed him up high mountain passes.

  Gahspar wondered if he could go on. The pass was unclimbable, he said to himself, and if he did somehow make it up there, how would he get down? It was probably two or three days down the other side. It was too far. Too far. He almost felt like he could lie down in the snow and it would all be over. He would follow Nammar to whatever afterworld would have him and be done with it.

  As if to punctuate his thoughts, the wind whipped up, stinging his face with icy shards that felt like sharp knives against his skin.

  For the lack of any other plan, he picked himself up and got back on his horse. He grabbed the other horse’s reins and rode.

  There was only a sliver of light left in the sky when he saw it: another cabin. It was on a flat ridge off to his left, not far from the trail. Past the cabin, the ridge turned up steeply and climbed nearly vertically, joining other mountain ridges far above. Gahspar turned the horses, struggled up onto the little ridge and headed for the cabin.

  As it turned out, the cabin was more like a small wooden barn with a large stove in it. There were four tiny stables with old, moldy straw in them and little else.

  Gahspar’s hands were like stone, his feet frozen stumps. He led the two horses to the stalls nearest the stove and put Nammar’s body in the one farthest from the fire. The four of them would each get their own stall tonight.

  There was firewood already cut. Gahspar felt like getting on his knees and thanking the Gods, but he was too cold and tired for anything but essential movements. His hands were numb and he fumbled to get the fire lit, but eventually he managed. He fed the horses, ate a meager dinner, and tried to get the warmth back into his limbs. The little cabin was drafty, but he had warm tea and he was out of the elements.

  In the morning, he set off again into the teeth of the mountain wind. Nammar was again placed sideways across his horse, his stiff body sticking out at odd angles. It was disconcerting to look at, unnatural, so Gahspar didn’t look.

  Around the time of high sun, Gahspar began to see the top of the pass. He was not a mountain person, did not understand the telescopic effect which made you think you saw the top of the mountain, only to climb further and see a new top later, and another after that. It made him angry and frustrated, these false tops. Like the Gods themselves were mocking him. His horse plodded endlessly through the deep snow. He was losing hope again.


  He topped a rise and the road leveled in front of him. He could see where it went between the two slopes on either side. This time it really was the top.

  He spent the night in another small traveler’s cabin a few hours beyond that. He hadn’t ridden a full day, but he didn’t know if he would find shelter again, so he stopped. Besides, he and the horses had earned the rest.

  The day after that was the worst yet. Heavy snow fell relentlessly. The road was so deep with snow that the horses could barely clear the surface when they picked up their feet. Travel slowed to a crawl. Each step was an effort.

  He rode till past dark, hoping there would be another cabin. Instead, the wind picked up and threw snow at him from all angles. High, wavy drifts angled across the road, some deeper than Gahspar was tall. The horses struggled through the snow like boats in a high sea. He could barely make out the road ahead. When he finally stopped, the horse under him shook with fatigue. Gahspar’s nerves were shot, his body aching and frozen. His teeth chattered, and he couldn’t stop it. There was not another person for miles, no shelter, no place to take refuge. Gahspar did not think he would last the night.

  He pulled the horses next to a high drift, wondering what to do. He remembered a time on the farm when a lamb had gone missing during a snow storm. They had found it, still alive, partially buried in a snow bank.

  Gahspar began to move what snow he could with his numb hands and feet. He piled it as high as he could, using the drift as a base. It was as high as the horses’ hip bones; it wouldn’t be enough. Gahspar was beyond exhaustion and shaking. There was now no part of his body he could actually feel. His teeth had stopped chattering, which didn’t seem like a positive sign. He tied the horses together, and left Nammar on his horse.

  He patted his horse on the neck.

  “Goodnight, my friend, you’ve been a good horse … I’m sorry.”

  He dug himself a little shelf in the drift and crawled in. There was snow above him and a packed layer below him. He made it deep enough that he could extend his arm and just barely get his hand out into the open air. More importantly, he could see out; Gahspar tended to be claustrophobic. It was warmer in there, and it was out of the wind. Gahspar thought he might be able to survive the night in there, if it didn’t collapse on him and smother him.

  Gahspar was trying to wriggle out of his little snow cave. He knew he was alone now, totally alone. His friend was dead, the horses would have died in the night, and now he would have to trudge on solo.

  He wasn’t sure where he was going or what he would do with his friend’s body. Without horses, there was no way he could take Nammar with him.

  He was fleeing from the evil that had taken over Surgaart, but he didn’t know where he was going to. When your whole life is about running from your past, you don’t have much of a future.

  Gahspar wriggled free, got to his feet, and brushed snow from his legs and shoulders. Every muscle in his body ached, like the cold had fused his bones together.

  He turned to look at the horses. Both were lying in the snow. His heart sank. Nammar’s horse was as dead as Nammar, lying on its side beneath a thick layer of snow, its glassy eyes staring ahead. He turned to see his horse, the brave little buckskin, lying down in the snow. The horse stirred and then slowly sat up, a layer of snow sliding off its flank. He’d never seen a horse do that before, but the little guy had managed to get partly out of the wind. It had even used the other horse’s body as a wind break. Snow had collected on its back and, as it heard Gahspar stirring, it unfolded itself and stood. White powder rained down as it got unsteadily to its feet.

  Gahspar buried Nammar in the snow beside the road and said his own impromptu prayer to the gods. He didn’t know the right way to say things, so he just did the best he could. He left Nammar with all his possessions, and his axe, in case he needed them in the next world. He did, however, take Nammar’s share of the food. When he was done he said goodbye to his friend and mounted his remarkable buckskin horse. It walked slowly now, stiffly, as if its joints had finally frozen. The horse seemed to be breathing hard, stopping often.

  The little horse was alive, but he was not well.

  The idea had been to get over the pass and go to Stonehelm. There Gahspar and Nammar would make a plea to the king, tell him of the problem in Surgaart, ask him to send warriors to help. The King of Orngaart had a vast number of fighting men, Nammar had said. They were well-trained, disciplined, all of them armed and armored. The king was the only one who could stop the evil army running roughshod through Surgaart. He was their only chance. After they made their plea, Gahspar and Nammar had planned to go to Nammar’s farm. Their plan hadn’t extended beyond that.

  Now everything was coming apart. Nammar was dead, and Gahspar didn’t know exactly where the man’s farm was. He couldn’t even go tell Nammar’s family what had happened to him. But Gahspar could still press on to Stonehelm. He could tell the king about the evil in Surgaart. He had to. Gahspar rode on.

  There was another cabin that night with a dirt floor and a makeshift stove. Gahspar brought the horse right into the cabin and they slept in there in a hazy warmth that seemed like a dream. The day after that was white, cold and painful. Gahspar remembered snow blowing horizontally, his face stinging, riding in slow motion down the pass on his wheezing, worn out horse. Everything else was a blur. After that it was two more days … or was it just one? Gahspar’s memory was a whiteout of snow and steep rock and high drifts. The last day he dozed as he rode, though not on purpose. He was afraid of going over a cliff. He had lost feeling in a few fingers and toes, and the cold had dulled his brain. All he could think of was staying on the road.

  The crunching sound woke him up. It was the sound of his horse’s hooves breaking through a thin crust of snow. There were rare patches of dark spruce and thin, towering fir trees. The patches gave way to little groves; the groves became a ragged forest. For a moment Gahspar had the horrible realization that he had gotten turned around in the storm, that he had come back down into Surgaart, that the whole nightmare had been for nothing.

  He looked around. One forest was like another, wasn’t it? Surely Orngaart had forests like this?

  He rode on.

  Random thoughts flitted through his frozen brain, most he could not quite capture, only bits here and there. Feelings. Impressions. He turned to see if Nammar was still behind him, then he remembered.

  He still felt numb. His body protested every movement. He saw a building through the trees. A house or a cabin. People. Salvation. He turned his horse into the woods and went crashing through the underbrush, not even waiting to find a proper trail. They pulled up in front of the cabin, the horse blowing white puffs of air out its nose. A man came around the cabin. He was thin, with a small face and wide ears that stuck out from his head.

  The man looked at Gahspar like he was seeing a ghost. His eyes were wide, his mouth formed into a little ‘o’. It dawned on Gahspar that he might be a ghost, dead up on the pass and still buried under the snow. Or maybe he was one of the skeletons now, his soul trapped in his decrepit, decaying body by a faraway necromancer. Either way, he was dead. A phantom. A horrible revenant.

  The man stared, and two other men stepped out of the cabin, their faces showing shock at the sight of him. He was dead. A terrible ghost haunting these poor people.

  “I came down the pass,” Gahspar said. His voice was gravelly, like a boat skidding over a shallow stream full of river stones. “Storm.”

  He felt disconnected and empty. His body wasn’t his anymore. He felt like he might float away, as if his haunting of these people was done.

  A woman stepped out of the house, wiping her hands on her apron. She looked him over.

  “Take him in the house.”

  The men tried to help him off his horse, though they hesitated to touch him.

  “Pick him up,” the woman shouted.

  Gahspar felt the ground rise up to meet him, saw the world spin, his horse’s flank
above him, then the men were lifting him up. The man with the wide ears leaned over him, hands under his arms.

  “You don’t have a beard,” Gahspar said to the man.

  “It grows in all wispy,” the man said, smiling a little too much, “Ugly.”

  Inside, they laid him on a bed and started to take off his clothes. They were damp on the inside, cold and stiff on the outside. The woman gave directions. The fire was stoked, and a plush fur blanket was put over him.

  “Take care of my horse,” Gahspar managed.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Marching On

  In Surgaart, darkness ruled. All business, all travel was done at night, everything closed during the day. Those who worshipped publicly visited the dark altars now. Those who still believed in the old gods were afraid to pray, even in daylight. Flocks of ebony crows always showed up, watching any gathering with accusing eyes.

  Vorus Blackfist sat at his window watching the courtyard below. The settlements on the southern coast had pledged their allegiance to him, the cities were under his control. Other than a few dispersed bands of fighting men, all of Surgaart was his. It was time to turn his attention to the north, to Orngaart.

  In the courtyard, Vorus’ mercenary was lining up a group of scruffy, dirty outlaw men who had been captured in the woods outside of town. Vorus watched as one of the outlaws was led forward. The man knelt, his head on a chopping block. He said something, but Vorus couldn’t hear it from where he stood. There was a large man with a deep hood, his face hidden. He wore an apron of rough sack cloth that was stained with blood. The man picked up a huge bladed axe. Vorus watched him set his feet, saw the blade effortlessly descending, the man’s head tumbling into the basket.