by L J Chappell
His rescuers had stowed an additional two bags of provisions in the cabin during their journey west: nothing exciting – more of the same. And they were able to make more hot soup from snow, animal fat and whatever remained of the supplies they had brought with them in the morning.
As the room became warmer, they removed their boots and gradually peeled off their outer layers of clothing, which they hung in rows in front of the fire. Then they sat in a semi-circle around the hearth and relaxed, turning from time to time as one side became flushed and hot. They ate and drank what they had, and talked idly.
He looked at their faces and pondered how little he knew about these people. Yes, he knew they were killers but perhaps he was wrong about himself and he was a killer as well. Maybe that was why he felt comfortable around them – trusted them.
Bane was big and strong and good natured: he had a wide smile which made it impossible not to like him. Ethryk would be difficult not to like as well: he was hard but open and honest – straightforward. After her initial suspicion, Thawn seemed to have decided she liked him and now seemed a little protective: looking out for him and encouraging him.
He was less sure about Garran – for all his mocking and laughing, his confidence seemed forced. Perhaps that was just because he still young.
He didn’t know what to make of the girl Magda at all. She was quiet and edgy, and her eyes always seemed hard, as if she was angry about something. He thought they liked each other, but sometimes she seemed distant; distant in a harsh way. She seemed very young, perhaps in her mid-teens, and very small to be doing this kind of work.
And then there was Kiergard Slorn. He was tall and lean, but the thing that stood out about him were his eyes, always alert, always observing and considering. He was difficult to read.
But it wasn’t any particular individual that he liked and trusted, or felt comfortable and at home with: it was the whole group. As if they were a single entity. There was something reassuring about the way they worked together, treated each other, listened to each other and took care of each other – almost like a family. Being with them as a group made everything outside seem less dangerous, less important and more distant. Even his absent memory worried him less while he was sitting here among them.
He wondered if they all felt that way, and that was the reason they chose to stay together. None of them seemed to have anything in common, but perhaps that was because he actually knew nothing about them. They might each be running away from something in their past. Or perhaps someone had employed each of them separately – picked the individuals to deliberately create this group. Or they might all be friends, and this was how they chose to live their lives together. He realised that he also had no idea how long they’d been together as a group: he simply assumed that it had been for a long time.
He pulled the blankets tighter around his shoulders and looked surreptitiously from side to side. The others were all relaxed, all comfortable, both with each other and with him. And, of course, he was warm, and he was well fed, and he had fresh water to drink.
A little later, when he curled up and closed his eyes, he fell asleep smiling.
3
In the morning, he discovered that every muscle in his body ached from the exertions of the day before. It seemed that he was not as healthy, strong or able as he had imagined the previous evening: perhaps the cold had numbed his nerves, or his brain had found some way to block out the pain.
He groaned when he rolled over for the first time.
‘I thought you were suspiciously cheerful yesterday,’ Garran said from nearby. ‘Everything catching up with you, is it?’
‘Very much so,’ he agreed.
Garran walked over and patted him on the shoulder, which hurt much more than it should have, and reassured him: ‘It’s downhill from now on. And I mean the journey, not your physical condition.’
‘Thanks.’ He looked around: everyone else was already moving, packing or dressing. Someone had put fresh wood on the fire, and it was blackened and burning. It seemed he was the last to wake. They ate and drank something warm before setting out … the stale and fatty provisions also seemed considerably less splendid than they had the evening before.
There was early morning daylight outside, so they had slept longer and risen later than the day before. Everyone seemed equally reluctant to leave the warm cabin and set out again into the cold.
‘If memory serves, just four hours walk from here is a village,’ Kiergard Slorn encouraged them: ‘a village with a tavern. Instead of this frozen bread and these dry, tasteless biscuits, we will buy ourselves a proper lunch and we will eat indoors, by a blazing fire, sitting at a table. And we shall wash it down with ale or beer or wine or whatever takes our fancy.’
They cheered at that idea.
‘The difficult part of the journey is over,’ Bane added. ‘From here, it is a long downhill walk.’
They left the warm cabin, and set off in a long single file along the trail. What Bane had said, about it only being a walk, turned out to be not completely true but after the first hour, it certainly became easier. There were no more really steep sections, and they only needed to use their hands to steady themselves, not for climbing. His rescuers chatted and joked amongst themselves as they walked.
Before long, he started to notice other buildings dotting the landscape: shelters for animals, and deserted shacks that were presumably used by herders during the summer months. The buildings somehow seemed more cheerful and happier than those in Urthgard, but perhaps that was because of the way he felt – because they were heading downhill now, into civilisation and some kind of freedom, rather than towards the mountains and near-certain death.
He also noticed swirling flakes of snow in the air. It seemed that their journey was finishing just in time: any later and the way might have been blocked. Where the snow began to lie, it became more difficult to see the path – there were no poles to indicate where this section of the route lay. Sometimes they found an obvious section of track, at other times they descended by skidding and sliding sideways across unmarked scree slopes.
The splendid view that he had anticipated yesterday was still absent, even though they were now walking eastwards and had emerged from the last of the mountains. Instead, a dark, grey and featureless layer of cloud lay over the land, and flurries of snow hid the landscape around them.
They eventually began to pass farms and houses, with smoke coming from the chimneys and lights in the windows. There were animals, huddling in groups under trees or behind walls, but there were no people waving as they passed. In weather like this, everyone was staying indoors if they possibly could.
The winding path became a broader track, worn into form and shape by regular use – easier to see and easier to follow. Before long it led them to the first village in Tremark, a huddle of perhaps fifty or sixty houses. He couldn’t believe the place was large enough to boast somewhere they could eat and drink, as Kiergard Slorn had claimed.
As they neared the first houses, a group emerged from one of the ramshackle buildings at the side of the road: half a dozen of them. They had obviously been keeping watch, waiting for people to arrive from the west.
‘Friends,’ Thawn reassured him, and the others were smiling.
Garran called: ‘Hey Ubrik!’ as they neared.
The man at the front, presumably “Ubrik”, greeted him with open arms: ‘Hey, little brother.’ They hugged tightly when they met. ‘How was your mysterious mission?’
‘Same as usual,’ Garran said: ‘lots of walking.’
‘It’s good to see you all,’ Slorn said. ‘If truth be told, I believed you would become bored waiting for us here.’
‘We did. We waited two nights, in case you were forced to turn back. But then we returned to Stormhaven.’
‘And?’
‘And I regret to inform you that Stormhaven is not nearly as exciting a place as it appeared when we disembarked from Captain Redwolf’s fine ship.’
‘Stormhaven is packed with pilgrims and petty thieves,’ another of them volunteered: ‘Everything is too expensive and there’s nothing to do.’
‘Even if we had found something worth doing, there would have been no space to do it,’ a third added. ‘Every inch of the town is busy with the faithful.’
‘And there are no rooms of any size to be had for gold or mercy,’ Garran’s brother Ubrik concluded: ‘So we came back here, where there is also nothing to do but we may at least do it in comfort. And it costs us far less.’
‘Where’s Vorrigan?’ Slorn asked.
‘He’s waiting further down the way. There’s a town – Din-don-den or some such name. We’ve got a surprise for you.’
‘Should I be worried by that? Your surprise?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘You may wish to stand and chatter,’ Bane interrupted, ‘but we’ve been walking since first light, largely on the promise of somewhere warm to sit and something pleasant to eat.’
‘There’s only one place in the village where you can eat, but I’m sure they will be extremely happy to discover that our party has suddenly doubled in size.’ Ubrik turned and led them further into the centre of the village, where a large inn stood overlooking the snow-covered square.
‘Nothing stronger than water to drink,’ Slorn told the others, ‘and don’t eat too much. This is only a small meal, a pause in our journey. We have to press on soon.’ It seemed that his promise of a slow and lazy meal followed by alcohol had only been in order to encourage them. No-one objected, so it also seemed that everyone else had already assumed that.
There were four long tables inside, and the front room was just large enough to pull them together into a square that they could all sit round. The menu was limited, but there didn’t seem to be any problem with quantity: as Ubrik had said, the owner was delighted to be feeding thirteen.
They had met up with six people, waiting here, which made their group twelve strong in total, plus the absent Vorrigan. Perhaps there were even more in this Company, further along their route. So far no-one had asked about the mage. Each of them had looked across and stared at him for a moment, but they were presumably waiting for Slorn to explain who he was and why he was here. From what they had said, he hadn’t told them what his plan was before leaving.
As they waited for their food, Kiergard Slorn introduced them: ‘These six souls are the rest of our band, our Brigade.’
‘Our Brigade?’ Garran objected. ‘I thought we were a Company.’
‘Very well, these six souls are the rest of our Company. You’ve seen Ubrik, and heard him no doubt. He is Garran’s brother. That’s Lisamel and Tremano, hiding at the back; Vrosko Din – he’s a priest of sorts; Menska’s our doctor; and that’s Karuin – she’s the most sensible one of us.’ He pointed at each of them in turn. ‘You won’t remember all the names at first, or which names accompany which faces, so just ask.’
There was a quiet moment, and then Ubrik asked: ‘Why do we need a Human?’
‘He’s not just a Human,’ Kiergard Slorn said. ‘He’s a mage.’
‘Is that what he told you,’ the priest laughed. ‘A mage? Show us your staff, mage.’
‘Yes. Show us some magecraft.’
‘He has lost his memory and his staff, but he’ll still be useful.’
‘Only if he can do magic. Can you do magic, mage?’
‘No. I can’t.’
‘Trust me,’ Slorn said.
‘Yeah, you said that about Ethryk,’ Garran said, ‘and Ethryk turned out to be useless.’ Ethryk punched his arm.
Their goading seemed light-hearted – they trusted Slorn, so the mage would have a period of grace in which to prove useful in some way: perhaps even to recover his magecraft, if he had ever had any.
‘Why is he dressed as an old woman?’ one of the women – perhaps Karuin – asked.
‘We had to smuggle him out of Lanvik,’ Magda explained. ‘And he hasn’t changed since then.’
‘If you’ve lost your memory,’ Karuin asked, ‘then how do you know you’re a mage?’
‘I don’t know I’m a mage. That’s just what people were saying about me. But I don’t remember any magecraft.’
‘Could you do magic if you had a staff?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Ah well. We’ll have to try and get you one. Magda …?’
‘No problem,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow, maybe.’ The others laughed.
‘What’s your name, mage?’ someone asked – the narrow faced woman: Lisamel, perhaps.
‘I don’t know that, either.’
‘Well you need a name,’ the priest advised. ‘We can’t just call you “Mage” or “Human”.’
‘That’s what we’ve been doing up till now,’ Garran admitted.
‘Only because you left all of the good manners on this side of the mountains,’ Ubrik told him, ‘together with the best brains.’
Their banter continued as they ate, until Slorn interrupted: ‘Lovely as this good humour and idle talk seems, we have things to do. We must collect Vorrigan and discover what his surprise is, and after that, we must decide how best to divide our journey to Stormhaven and then onwards to Darkfall Ness. So let us finish quickly here.’
The Company were in good spirits as they took to the road: laughing, joking and reminiscing. Snow was still falling, but only in light flurries and there wasn’t much in the way of wind. It wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t bad enough that walking was a struggle.
‘He walks slowly, doesn’t he? Your mage?’ one of the others, Tremano, asked after a while. ‘And his legs move in an awkward way.’
‘He’s tired, and he’s weak,’ Thawn said. ‘But he’s doing much better than when we rescued him.’
‘So how are we going to choose a name for him?’ someone asked.
‘That should be his decision. Rather than ours,’ Garran said. ‘Obviously.’
‘Well, obviously,’ Ubrik agreed. ‘What name do you want, mage?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘And you have no idea, no clue about what your name might have been before?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Well, we could suggest different names to you,’ Ubrik proposed. ‘Perhaps hearing your own name will bring back some of your memories. Even if it doesn’t, the sound of it might be familiar to you. What about “Ubrik”? It’s a fine name.’
‘No,’ he shook his head.
‘Just as well,’ Garran said. ‘One “Ubrik” is already more than we need.’
After that, they took turns to shout out names as they walked down the mountain road: it was astounding how many different names they thought of. The exercise became a routine, a game: one of them could call out a name, and he would call back: ‘No!’, and it developed a rhythm. From time to time they interrupted and joked with each other: ‘Someone’s already said that,’ or ‘You made that up,’ or ‘That’s for a pet, not a person,’ and so on.
Despite their efforts, after an hour and a half they eventually admitted that they probably didn’t know enough Human names to accidentally guess his.
‘And none of those sounded familiar?’ Ubrik asked him.
‘No. None of them. I’m sorry.’
‘Well, did you like the sound of any of them?’ he prompted.
‘I suppose so, but they didn’t really feel like my name.’
‘If you don’t fancy any of those names, perhaps we could choose something to call you? Just until your memory returns and you can introduce yourself properly to us.’
‘What were you thinking?’ Garran asked.
‘I was thinking Urthgard, or Lanvik,’ his brother explained: ‘something that would remind us where we found him.’
‘But those are places,’ Garran said.
‘Still better than most of your suggestions,’ Ubrik shrugged.
‘Stop bickering, you two,’ Magda interrupted. ‘Save it for when you won’t annoy the rest of us.’
<
br /> The conversation gradually petered out and then the Company split into quieter groups of twos and threes.
‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ Magda said, ‘but from time to time they actually fight. Not to hurt each other, but for real: sometimes it gets in the way of whatever we’re trying to do. I suppose that’s what brothers are like.’
‘I might have a brother,’ he replied. ‘Or more than one. Or sisters. Somewhere. I wonder if I’d even recognise them if I saw them. They’re probably worried – looking for me …’
‘Well, even if they are, they’re not here now. Best not to think about such things.’ she advised, and then dropped further back to walk with Slorn.
‘It’s a sensitive subject for her,’ an unfamiliar voice advised: ‘Family.’ One of the new group was walking along side him – an unassuming, quiet woman. The doctor, perhaps.
‘Why?’
‘How would we know? She doesn’t talk about it, so we don’t bring it up. Maybe she’s just homesick.’ There was a pause, and then: ‘I’m not sure you remember me from Slorn’s introductions, so I thought I’d introduce myself again. I’m Menska.’
‘Are you the doctor?’
‘I am, yes. Or, at least, the closest we have to a doctor. I don’t have much experience with Humans, I’m afraid, and I don’t have Human medicines. I know a little, though, and I’ll find out more when I can. In the meantime, try not to get hurt.’
‘In case you accidentally cut one of my arms off? Or poison me.’
‘Something like that, yes.’ The doctor smiled in a way that made it clear she hadn’t thought much of his joke. ‘Tell me, what do you remember?’
‘Nothing, really. No facts.’
‘But you remember language and communication: you’re using a wide range of gestures and facial expressions, as well as words. Tell me, what are seven nines?’
‘Sixty-three.’
‘Then you remember the rules of simple arithmetic. Could you draw a map of the world, if I asked?’
‘No.’
‘Do you remember any place names? Countries, or cities, or lakes or anything like that?’