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I AM AWAKENED FROM A DREAM OF FIRE AND OLD BLOOD by a whisper. These days, it does not take much to rouse me, for despite the promised security of the wall, my instincts remain as sharp as ever. Maybe we are safe, and those instincts are little more than restless voices desperate to be heard, but they make me feel better whenever the light is gone from the day and the terrible moans of the Dead slip through the cracks in that wall.
“Olta, are you awake?”
I consider feigning sleep, but if anyone knows my instincts better than I do, it’s my brother, as he should. He shares them, both of us cut from the same cloth as our father, even if I’m the only one who lived up to his promise. Thus, with a sigh I roll over to face where he is hunkered down next to my pillow. I wince at the stench of sweat and ale and onions that wreathes my face.
“What is it, Admir? And what time is it?”
“I have something to you show you, brother.”
It seems as if Admir always has something to show me. He is younger than I by ten years, and truth be told, as naïve as a newborn. Every day his discoveries get more redundant and tiresome. Here is the remnant of an old shield half-buried in the mud; there, a well rumored to have no bottom, but from which he swears he can hear the ancestral prayers of the ashen priests. And oh, look, a half-mad Menhada woman who seems to be unaware that her shriveled breast is exposed.
“I’ve never had call to question your Great Father’s sense,” my comrade Ilion once remarked, “until I watched your brother for more than a minute. Then I found myself wondering why he didn’t just drown that one in the brook.”
To which I’d responded: “The water would have refused him.”
“What is it?” I ask my brother again, suddenly more tired than I have any cause to be. We were warriors once, the greatest warriors in all the land, bested by no one, merely scarred by upheavals that would have reduced others to ash. We earned our wounds and our reputations, our pride. We earned the kingdom we built. Now we are weakened by immobility, by the lack of a cause to fight, by indignity and humiliation, and every day we struggle to find things to do, to find worth amid the bitterness of being owned.
Elldimek, our kingdom, which they have christened The Redoubt, belongs to another now, their only advantage against us being their greater number, an advantage that will do them little good when the world falls again. And it will, for though few dare to say it, the stench of carrion already so prevalent in the air seems to thicken with each passing day. Even the moons seem duller, as if the stink of death has tainted their light.
Something is coming, and in my most beautiful dreams, I imagine opening those doors again as my father once did, this time not to usurpers, but to devourers, a tactical move which would finally bring us all back down to the same level: that of meat.
“You’ll have to come see. I don’t have the words to describe it.”
“Try.”
His thickly bearded face scrunches up in concentration. I had hoped his education, crude as it is, would have taken root by now, but alas, I fear it’s wasted on him. Not that this is a surprise. He thrives on stories that need no embellishments and yet get convoluted and more preposterous in the retelling with every passing season. And the Redoubt library, once the bastion of our ferocious history, has become tamed by the influence of other races. Now, instead of a shrine to dwarven pride, it has become an argument in which too many voices strain to be heard.
“I went outside,” he says, much too loudly and in an instant, I am sitting up, my hand clamped over his mouth, surprising him. I take in the rest of the room, a one-time stable for our regal mounts that still smells of horse manure; a not unpleasant smell, if not for the implication that this is where we belong in the absence of other animals.
My comrades, two dozen in all, sleep on, enwombed by the amber dance with shadow beneath tallow flames.
“You went...outside? Have you gone mad?”
I remove my hand, repulsed by the feel of his spittle-soaked lips against my palm as he smiles.
“I wasn’t alone. Nderin went with me. He’s the one who told me about the garden in the woods. He’d been there before, with the Foresters. Only it was different then. There weren’t so many of them.”
Nderin is my friend Uril’s son. Uril comes from a long line of butchers and you can still see in his eyes how much he wishes the meat were still pleading for mercy and dressed in the colors of our one-time enemies. His son is trouble enough that it is only a matter of time before the Dead get their hands on him. Never aloud would I admit it, but nobody would grieve if they did. And based on how he treats him, I suspect Uril feels the same. The blood that runs sluggishly through our veins has seldom felt so cold.
“You were warned not to go out there.”
“Nderin knows a path. In the dark the Dead couldn’t see us. And there are not nearly as many as before. You’ve heard the talk. There’s rumors they might be going away.”
“Talk is all that is and you’re a fool to listen to it. Last time our people made benevolent assumptions, we ended up as slaves. Guessing at the patterns of the Restless is a good way to get yourself killed, or worse.”
“The path is safe.”
“Safe is not a word anyone gets to use anymore, Admir.”
He wasn’t listening, his eyes sparkling with excitement. “We only saw a few dozen of them, and the garden, it’s hidden among the dead trees.”
“What kind of garden?”
“You’ll have to come see.”
“You’re a bigger imbecile than I thought if you think I’m going to go wandering out there in the dark to see some flowers.”
“They’re not flowers, though. That’s the thing.”
I lay down and roll away from him, close my eyes though I know he has ruined the notion of rest for me for another night. “Get some sleep. You have horseshit to shovel in the morning.”
He sighs his frustration, puts a hand on my shoulder. “Please.”
“I’ll break your nose for you if you don’t go to bed, Admir.”
A grunt and he moves away, retreating to his cot, where, like the child I know him to be, he pouts and huffs until mercifully his dreams take him back to battlefields he can hardly recall.
In that, we are birds of a feather.
✽✽✽
For the second time in as many hours I am dragged from sleep. Incensed, I am instantly ready to make good on my threat to shatter the cartilage in my idiot brother’s nose, but upon opening my eyes to the first harsh strains of daylight through the rents in the stable roof, it is not Admir that stands over my cot, but Uril the Butcher. I know by the look on his long haggard face that there’s trouble. Silently, I rise and get dressed, sparing a moment to sit on the edge of my cot, his presence like a thrummed violin beside me. My back aches, muscles sore.
“How long?” I ask him, lacing up my boots.
“Since last night.”
“We should leave them to whatever fate befell them.”
Uril, never a man to waste a word, merely nods in acknowledgment, but it’s a redundant gesture. The fact that he’s here and I am getting dressed means we’ve already made the decision to go after our fool kin. And I know why. Loyalty to one another, no matter how misguided, is all we have left, and our numbers are hardly so impressive we can afford to see them reduced, though the fact that Admir and Nderin have been gone since midnight does not augur well for their chances of survival.
To say nothing of our own.
I rise and look at Uril’s shabby armor, the boiled leather so inadequate for his bulk it makes it difficult for him to breathe. I have the opposite problem with my own. These past few months, as food has become scarcer, I have lost weight and my armor hangs loose, reducing its efficacy. Soon it’ll be an instrument of music, not war.
“We should speak to Behar.”
Uril gives a single shake of his head and pats his belly, which tells me he has already anticipated the request and taken care of it. Which is wise. The less time we waste engaged in noxious verbal jousting with one of the Nightcoats, the better. As we are not permitted blades, we have, on our infrequent excursions beyond the wall, been forced to seek the aid of Karzhaddi and his thugs. Such arrangements are frequently unpleasant, costly, and best avoided, but one might say the same of death, which is, as any fool knows, the likely result of venturing outside unarmed.
Most of our brethren sleep on around us, as they will continue to do until the house master or his emissary comes and assigns them their tasks for the day. I am still in Dhimiter’s service, but since his health has started to fail (at an alarming rate), he has been much less vigilant in keeping us in line. If we are still slaves, it is to our own memories and shame, and not because Dhimiter is in any way a governing force. He exits his house less and less these days, and on the rare occasions in which he is visible in daylight, his skin has a papery, translucent look. One wonders how long it will be before Rasuk and his master in the Undertaking come for him. Dhimiter has never been unkind, nor will he be missed. That he has any dominion at all (that anyone has) is an affront that will never be forgiven, only avenged when the wheel turns again.
We head outside into the morning sun, the smell of fresh cut grass a sensory illusion of serenity. It is nothing more than the scent of the lamps, which burn only at night for regulated hours, but permeate the day in the Downs.
Uril bows his head and does his best to ignore the curious looks of the helpless. Hollow-eyed wraiths watch us with envy only because we have not fallen quite so low. Filth runs in clotted brown rivers down the streets and there is waste everywhere. If it cannot be eaten, it lays discarded alongside those who have been discarded themselves. Once-proud people, thieves, respected politicians, murderers, valiant warriors—all have been made the same by poverty or punishment, and all of them reek of horror. Human, elf, dwarf, and ghûl, no matter what the race, they seem to gather closer together with each passing day despite having nothing to say, as if wretchedness wishes to stitch them together into one tragic tapestry.
Or as if they are becoming a single sentient entity out of fear of what’s coming.
The Outer City stinks of death and decay. The perpetual presence of crows overhead, sometimes almost thick enough to block out the sun, fills me with foreboding. At least today we are spared the horrible sounds of the Dead beyond the wall. All is curiously quiet out there, but I am hardly encouraged by the silence. There was little noise the day my father opened the gates to our oblivion, either. I am reminded of this as Uril and I stand before them and the sentries go about facilitating our egress. There are others here—Foresters, farmers, and fools among them—eager to be the ones who return from their adventures with food and supplies... the currency of respect. They will fail, of course. There is nothing out there for anyone, anymore. I suspect even the Dead know that now, know that they’ve won, and that all they need to do is wait it out and we will join their ranks from the inside. Maybe that’s why they’ve been so quiet.
A watchman atop the tower gives the all-clear. I hear one of the human sentinels mutter something about “a few less mouths to feed.” Cranks turn, gears grind with a ferocious shriek, rust flakes off the cogs, and the chains rattle to life. The doors open, a wooden mouth yawning wide, bathing us in carrion breath. Out here the crows spot the landscape like black marks indicating the location of the fallen. And they are everywhere, some felled by the sentries, others the bodies of misfortunates exiled as punishment for crimes against the Magisterium.
Inside the wall are farms, houses, homes, as close to an ordinary existence as one can expect in the hell the world has become. There are also dungeons, sewers, tunnels, courts. But out here, there is nothing but dead earth, the grass trampled flat, the clay poisoned by the corrupted remains of the Restless. Fires razed the woods and the trees were twisted and stunted when they returned to life. It is a lifeless landscape, perpetually covered in an omnipresent mist that ebbs and flows like the ghost of a forgotten sea.
“Move along,” barks one of the sentries, an unmistakable note of glee in his voice, and when I close my eyes, I imagine slipping the blade Ulric passed me up under his helmet and slicing his throat. It’s a brief thought, but the imagined scent of fresh blood, the heat of it coursing over my fingers, stirs my loins.
And then we are outside, two dozen of us in all, and the gate slams shut with a finality that vibrates through my bones.
As one, wordlessly, we start to walk.
✽✽✽
We hunted these lands once, brought animals down with unmatched skill and reveled in the kill with our brethren. Carcasses were dragged or carried over the shoulder home to our kingdom for ribald celebrations that would last until the sun rose, sometimes longer. The following day the streets would be populated by women and children who looked upon us adoringly (or with good-humored pity), as the hangover forced us to seek out the cure. All of that is gone now, stolen from us in a moment, and that world is nothing more than a thing of old stories and wistful memory. Our home is a prison, the streets crowded with wretches who no more recognize our worth than they do their own. And out here, our once-fair land reeks, the foul breeze like a diseased giant blowing upon his meal before devouring it.
All the animals are gone, either run to safer territory or wiped out entirely, for when the Dead could not get at us, they took what they could. We have even seen them eating clay, and each other.
We walk for an hour before stopping to rest, midway between home and the sprawling woods in which I spent the greater part of my childhood. Back when fighting the horde seemed like a sound strategy, we lit those woods aflame, watched it burn, the conflagration like the whole world burning as the Restless, who had been using it as a corridor, were cooked. Most considered it a victory, but for months I felt a hard knot of sadness in my throat at the thought of what we had done, of the beauty we had destroyed. Long before I learned to hunt, the woods had been my haven, a magical hiding place, a kingdom unto itself. There I learned to use my imagination to conjure up impossible monsters; I conquered them all like the mighty warrior I promised myself I would someday become. And I did, only to find myself shoulder-to-shoulder with my brothers as we razed that Place of Dreams. Slavery, sickness, grief... nothing has since eclipsed that loss for me. All of us have the day we knew our world was dead. That was mine.
Ever since, I have become a ghost in a land of ash.
As I sit upon a rock gnawing on a piece of stale bread and looking up at the jaundiced clouds, Uril taps a knuckle against my shoulder. I look up at him, a stone-faced monolith in armor, and he nods at something behind me, in the direction of the woods. The bread is like a stone that lodges in my throat as I rise.
Through the phalanx of blackened stems that is all that remains of the woods, one of the Restless comes, cerulean eyes like dull stars trapped in the black hole of its skull. It is horribly emaciated, practically indistinguishable from the spindly arachnidan trunks of the trees through which it moves with incongruous grace. And although nothing but vellum stretched tight over bones, it has somehow found the ability to smile.
I draw my dagger, but Uril stays my hand. There is a light in his eyes that I know all too well, and without speaking, his words are clear: Allow me this one. There will be more.
Once the dead thing has been dispatched, the blue light in its eyes remaining lit though its head has been removed, we stand in silence for a moment. At length, spurned by the frustration of inactivity, the quiet is broken as the Foresters take their own path, bound for the hills to the east and to land they hope has been neglected by the attention of the desperate Dead. There are fourteen of them. Only luck will preserve that number when they return. On each of their faces is acknowledgment of this fact. On most, the fear is tempered by apathy. We have lived long enough. We bid them safe passage with unspoken blessings, then watch as another, smaller group heads off to the west and to the plains. I trust no one in this group. They are dwarves but have managed the admittedly enviable task of forgetting where they came from. If they are slaves, the Nightcoats hold the deed, and as such, the nature of their mission outside the walls will go unknown by all but those within the cabal.
Which leaves only four: me, Uril, and the two young dwarves, Tarek and Veli, who seem to have ventured outside the gate simply for the fun of it, or as a break from the misery that exists within. For them, we have little patience. It is the foolishness of youth that has brought us here, after all. As Uril heads straight on through the woods, I turn to look at Veli, the younger of the two, as he tussles with his friend.
“You.”
He stops dead as if I have slapped him. I have always been intimidating in aspect, at least among my own kind, but these days the black hate that exists in my skull has made oil of my eyes. I have seen them reflected in glass and it frightens even me.
“Yes?”
“You were a fool to come,” I tell him, and then glance at Tarek. “Both of you. And you are not our charges. If you should fall behind or fall prey to another, we will leave you, so you have a choice: stay close or head home. Do you have weapons?”
Veli produces a sharpened stick.
Tarek brandishes a long thin needle, no doubt stolen from his mother’s knitting basket.
I can see by their faces that until this moment, they believed themselves aptly armed, which they are if they also continue in the belief that the Dead have receded, a belief in my soul I know is wrong. The stench of them fills my nose, carried to me on a breeze that has come from darker places.
The boys can see by my face that they have made a mistake.
Tarek stares at his feet.
Veli clears his throat. “We will stay close, Olta. We will watch your back.”
For this, he earns more respect from me than I let show. Weaker men would have run. I turn and join Uril, who has just entered the woods like a knife through the ribcage of some enormous beast.
✽✽✽
It is not the world of my childhood within those blackened bones, but the world as it is now: a graveyard. Death and old smoke cloy my nostrils as I follow Uril’s lead through the charred stalks of the trees. The ground beneath our feet is thick and loamy but crunches here and there as burnt wood and bark are driven further into the earth. A bluish haze hangs in the air, as if the last fog got caught in the maze. A brief glance over my shoulder shows the boys following silently, the color drained from them by my words and the mist both. Their faces have hardened now, annoyed perhaps that they allowed themselves to forget their nobility, their pride, the instinct that should govern everything to keep them alive. But they are young and part of a new generation that no amount of teaching can make whole. Those days are gone. Assuming they live to grow older, they will be pretenders, shadows of what our race once was and can never be again.
A sudden burst of noise and my head snaps back around, my body tensing into a defensive posture, blade extended, breath held. I look up. The sickly clouds are momentarily eclipsed by a multitude of crows as they screech ahead of us, bound for whatever lies ahead. Their numbers seem endless, the cacophony the only sound in the world.
What do you know? I ask them. What do you see? Would that we could harness their flight, their sight, their wisdom, then perhaps we might stand a chance in the war to come. As it stands, we are merely waiting for the inevitable end.
It takes minutes, hours, weeks, for the last stragglers to pass over our stilled quartet. The noise recedes. Even still, I listen, for the crows are omens and it will do us well to measure the distance it takes them to reach where they’re going, to reach the instruments of our doom. That there is something out there is not in question, only where it is and how long it will take to reach us, to reach Elldimek.
I straighten, look back at the boys and note that the mist has thickened into a fog around us. “Come.”
They narrow the gap between us in an instant and look up at me breathlessly, awaiting my command. In Tarek’s eyes I see the slightest spark of defiance and bitterness. It is a quality I admire. If he can learn to harness it, make a fire from all those unruly sparks, there might be hope for him, yet.
“Stay close but keep an eye on our backs. I’d rather not have any surprises.”
As one the boys nod, Veli’s gaze lingering a moment longer than necessary before he moves away, as if he was trying to read something in my face. He won’t, of course. The people who might have been able to divine meaning from my eyes are long since buried. At the thought, I touch the spot on my breastplate where my wife’s silver ring used to hang from a cord around my neck. It is, like so many things, gone now, adorning the finger of another who knows nothing of our love or the anguish which stains that ring. I traded it to avoid starving, to keep death away a moment longer, as I couldn’t keep it from her. Maybe if the balance turns again, I’ll have an opportunity to find it.
Such notions exist as fragile comforts in the moments before sleep.
For the first time since embarking on this fool’s errand, I think of my brother. I have avoided it until now because with the summoning of his face comes awareness of his death. He is a warrior, yes, but a poor one, and I can only imagine, based on the excitement that limned his tongue last night, that battle was the furthest thing from his mind. There is a chance, of course, that he ventured out here and encountered nothing, but there’s not a part of me that believes it. Out here is a hell in waiting.
I expect to find him dead, torn to pieces, or to not find him at all. There was a time when the absence of a body to bury would have haunted me. Not so any more. And should I find him dead, will I mourn his loss? Some part of me will, yes, as any man would lament the taking of kin, but things have changed too much for me to care as I should. He is little more than another body now, and one that has become a burden. The cruelest part of me anticipates the relief I will feel when I confirm he’s gone, for so often it is akin to having a child in my care. With the world on the verge of change once more, I need to be unencumbered.
Ahead, Uril stops and leans forward. He has spotted something in the murky soup between the dead trees. At my approach, he raises a hand and I cease moving. Behind me, I hear the boys do the same. Then I realize my mistake. Not boys. Boy.
I start to turn, and a crow explodes toward me from somewhere between the trees to my left. It does not feel like a merry coincidence; it feels intentional, part of a design that will have many parts and leave me in a similar state when it ends. I raise an arm over my face as the crow skims close enough for me to feel the displaced air as he caws and swoops upward. The crows are their familiars. Then he is gone, his darkness stitched back into the shadows that birthed him and I am turning again, scanning the graveyard of bones for the boys and finding only one.
Veli stands a few feet away, his back to me. I spare a moment to check on Uril. He is still in the same place, as rooted to the ground as the trees, but upon sensing my attention, looks reluctantly away and meets my gaze. Then he looks beyond me, toward Veli, and his face changes, goes slack. It is not an expression I have ever seen before, and it fills me with foreign dread.
I follow his gaze back to Veli, who is where I left him, but now the boy’s body is quaking so violently it’s as if he’s being manhandled by a ghost. He is close enough for me to grab him if I’m willing to move, but for the moment I can’t, and it is not quite fear that holds me in thrall, but awe. Awe at the thing I have mistaken as the movement of dead branches through the fog. It is nothing so benign, and for all I have seen in my time in this world, I am aware that I am bearing witness now to something that will change me from this moment forth.
It is taller than any of the Restless we have seen thus far. Taller than three men, and no part of it is thicker than my wrist. It looks for all the world like an effigy made animate, a crude idol of rope and bone. A gathering of sticks. And as it ducks low and pulls itself through the narrow gap between the boles of dead trees, it appears as if the woods itself has given birth to it. The fog whirls away at its approach, allowing me the full view of the horror it represents here in this dreadful place. Nothing about it suggests anything human, but there are features twisted and buried beneath its bark-like skin, a mottled face, as if a man died and was subsumed by a withering tree, granting it some form of perverse life, threading its veins with sap. Its chest heaves as it draws itself back up to full height and now that it has shredded the fog that obscured it from view, I can see that in its right hand hangs the limp body of Veli’s friend, Tarek. The head and one arm are missing, the stumps squirting blood down onto the blackened earth, slaking its thirst. The creature’s jaw moves languidly as he chews on the boy’s remains.
Perhaps to compensate for his embarrassment, to prove his worth and impress, Tarek decided to seek out the source of a noise, and in so doing, sealed his fate.
I look down at my hand, at the blade. It may as well be a feather for all the good it will do. I dare cast another glance at Urik. He is frozen by fear, as he should be. Bravery has found an inhospitable home here. If we fight, we will die. If we run, it will follow, but of these two choices, only the latter makes sense. It is not my time. Not yet. I will know it when it comes, but it does not come today, not at the hands of this godless devil of sticks and bone and rope and blue fire in place of eyes.
“Urik,” I hiss, and hear a creaking sound as the creature ceases its masticating and turns in my direction. I watch it cock its triangular head toward my voice. Blind. Despite the twin blue orbs of fire, the thing has no eyes. Urik brings his wide gaze to bear on me.
I tilt my head toward the trees at our back. “We run.” He nods once and some of the life, if not the color, returns to his face. Sometimes the mere thought of action can draw a man out of himself and away from certain death.
“The boy,” he whispers. “Don’t let the Witherer take him.”
He has just christened this creature. Henceforth, this is how it shall be known. Not some nameless thing, as it deserves to remain, but The Witherer, a name that will instill fear in all who hear it, for it, like so many of this creature’s ilk, portends a quick yet painful end, an abomination that has no right to be here and now has dominion. Its presence confirms that we do not know what roams the territory beyond our walls, that we have been arrogant in thinking our enemy familiar. The terrible truth is that we know less than we did before.
The world has gone mad.
In two quick steps I have the boy by the scruff of the neck.
“No!” he screams, mistaking me in his fright for another devil of the woods.
And that is all it takes for the Witherer to find us.
The sound of it lunging toward us is the sound of all the kindling in the woods breaking at once, and I do not wait to feel the twigs of its fingers on my body. I am gone, running, dragging the young one flailing along with me through the fog. I have no idea where I am going, only that behind us is death so I must keep pushing ahead. More than once my progress is halted by trees, the pain of the collision setting stars alight in my eyes, in my bones, but I persevere, Urik a bulky shadow to my left, keeping the pace. The brush crashes down behind us, trunks are pulverized, groan and fall. The Witherer comes, stalking us through the same woods where I became a warrior before burning them down just as this creature would burn me down, and perhaps I deserve it after all. Perhaps this thing is not Restless. Perhaps it has been resting all along and the woods have resurrected it to make me pay for my desecration of this sacred place.
Perhaps it is an end I deserve. And in that moment, I think not of my brother, of my brethren, of anything but moving forward and away from that hellish demon that would strip me of my skin. I am not afraid to die.
I am afraid to die and become Restless.
Veli’s foot finds a root and he is yanked from my grasp as surely as if the Witherer snatched him away. I slow but do not stop, glance back at the dazed boy struggling to his feet, and I think of going back for him, think of being brave, of trying to save him. But then instinct takes over and I know that if I do not stop, do not go back, the boy will be killed, and the killing and the feeding will slow the creature down. The boy will die; we will live. I do not enjoy making this decision. There is no nobility in it, only self-preservation. But the choice is made, and I run and close my eyes as the crashing sounds behind me abruptly cease and the boy’s scream shatters the brief silence until it too is made silent.
Urik is still with me, a shadow in the fog, and I wonder what he will say, what he will think, and then realize I don’t care. He will thank me for his life, as I thank Veli for mine. Should we live to recount this tale, there will be no mention of the forced sacrifice, of my abandonment of the child. These are not details that will matter to anyone but the parents, and even their grief will be muted by the fear of what we have encountered in the dead woods today.
We run for an hour, until we are certain the only sounds we can hear are those of our own passage, the thunder in our chests and ears and throats, and still we do not stop.
Only when the fog is gone and the light returned to the day do we rest, in what appears at first glance as a clearing. What it resolves to be upon closer inspection is, in some ways, worse than the thing behind us.
Urik looks at me. “We should go home.”
I agree, but not yet, partly out of curiosity, mostly because I know he is trying to protect me from what I might see.
We have reached not a clearing, but a garden, ringed so perfectly by the trees it looks as though it was designed by man and not nature. But though this is undoubtedly the garden of which my brother spoke, nothing grows here... though plenty has been planted.
“We should go,” Urik says again, his impatience marked by renewed terror at the new atrocity laid out before us.
It is a garden of hands, of arms buried in soil. Dozens of them, each one reaching into the air like some strange kind of fleshy plant. Each one sprouts from the elbow, and though there is nothing to suggest that these limbs have not been severed from their owners, I know this is not true. I know there are bodies beneath the blackened earth.
“Why?” Urik asks. “Why would someone do this?”
I can only shake my head. It is not a question that is likely to ever be answered, and in truth I care less about the genesis of this terrible display than I care about finding out who populates it. And after a half-hearted attempt to dissuade me Urik turns back to guard our backs, his eyes set on the fog as it recedes like a sheet pulled away from a corpse. For now, the woods appear empty back there. If we are fortunate, the Witherer has retreated to feed on the bounty it took from us.
I walk among the hands, out for a stroll in a garden of Hell. Whomever interred these poor creatures did not distinguish by race. There are humans here, and dwarves, even an elf. It looks like a mockery of the dead woods around us, all those hands twisted into claws, grabbing at the air in desperation as they died, suffocating, their lungs filled with dirt.
It does not take me long to find what I’m looking for, and as if he has been waiting for it, as if this was the real reason he didn’t want me among the arms, Urik turns to look at me, his face grim.
The arm reaching from the dirt before me has an inked symbol of a wolf on its blanched white wrist, courtesy of the street people who offer such things in trade. Such practices are common, but the street people pride themselves on never repeating a design.
And this one belongs to Nderin, Urik’s son.
At the look in my eyes, he nods his acceptance of the news and trudges through the dirt to where I stand. I put a hand on his shoulder and leave him to his mourning, though I suspect it will be quiet and not long. Urik has never had much love for his son. If anything, he has seen him as a disappointment, which I have often suspected is simply us looking at our kin as mirrors, but like me, loyalty has brought us here to retrieve them, alive or dead.
I search the remaining graves, if such a name can be employed for this wickedness, and although my brother is not marked, I will recognize his stubby fingers.
But he is not here.
Urik jolts and takes a step back just as I am sitting down to smoke upon a moss-shrouded rock. Pipe to my mouth, match held aloft, I look and forget the fire until it burns my fingers.
The hand next to Ndemir’s has moved. Then his son’s hand moves.
Then they all do.
“Olta...” Urik shakes his head. “Could they be...?”
I shake my head. We have been here too long, and while my kind are known to be able to survive longer in situations in which others would suffocate, even we dwarves couldn’t manage such a prolonged internment. Before the Witherer, we might have fooled ourselves into hoping that there’s still a chance for Ndemir. Now it can only be more witchery, another display of the wicked magic that permeates this place. And we should not be here. Every moment brings us closer to our own destruction, a reality that is hardly limited by this place, but seems represented by it.
Urik starts to bend down to grab his son’s hand. In a flash I am by his side, my hand clamped on his wrist. “No,” I tell him. “Not unless you want to join him.”
And as if they have heard, the hands grow still, underwater flowers in the absence of a current.
“Home,” I say, and though it takes us an eternity, at last we move, not back the way we have come, but to the west, the long way around. We are willing to endure the protracted journey if it means we are free of this hellish place.
Urik the Butcher, Urik the Quiet, says nothing on the long walk home. He simply surveys the landscape and absently massages his wrist.
✽✽✽
Some unknown time later, the walls of Elldimek hove into view, misted by distance. From here I can see the black specks of the crows. They are not circling but roosting on the walls. Watchers.
My feet ache, and my heart aches, too. I want to rest, but so close to home and unsure of what further surprises the Outside might have in store for us, I walk on. Urik trails behind. His is not a mask of sorrow, but anger, for though he might have little feeling left for Ndemir in his deadened soul, still he feels the theft of one of our own at the hands of these ungodly creatures. With it comes the awareness that this will never end, that we are the hunted now and one day the sun will rise on a world that is empty of natural life. Our kingdom, already stolen once, will be owned for good by demons, and we will be no more.
And perhaps that is how it should be, for what use are we to this world as slaves? Even those who would own us are themselves owned by the monsters that exist beyond the walls.
“Olta,” Urik says, breathless. “Stop.”
I do as he asks. He is bent double, bile unspooling from his mouth in a long silvery thread. I wait, watching him carefully as the foul breeze blows around us and the crows watch quietly. I consider this giant of a man, a man that in the old days fought proudly alongside me, a man I would have called a friend. Today, we are strangers. I have no money to buy his meat, and the Foresters don’t provide enough to keep him in business, which renders him a butcher in name only. I no longer trust this man.
“Do you wish to share something with me before we reach the gate, Urik?”
He takes his time gathering his breath, clearing his lungs, and then he straightens, allowing me to see the blade in his hand. It is held downward, unthreateningly, but this offers little comfort, not given my suspicion of him, confirmation of which I have awaited since I first awoke to find him in my quarters.
There is nothing to read on his face.
“Why did you really bring me out here? Was it the Nightcoats?” I ask him.
He says nothing, betrays even less.
“Why?”
Still he is silent, but that is condemnation enough. “What benefit in killing me and my brother?”
He shakes his head, only slightly, but without words I cannot decide if he is denying my words or simply can’t explain the motives behind his assignment.
“Are they simply weeding out the weak so their resistance will be stronger when the time comes?”
“Olta...”
“And what of your boy? Was that your test? Did they require a sacrifice before they could trust you? You didn’t look upset enough to have found him in that garden.”
“I don’t—”
“Is that because you put them there? Was it you who buried all those people in the woods? Is it some kind of ritualistic burial ground? Help me to understand. Did you bring me there to kill me? Did you kill Admir, too? Where is he?”
He shakes his head again and now there is pain on his face. “It’s not like that.”
I step closer to him and his knife hand twitches. The crows rejoice. “Then what is it like? Why didn’t you kill me in the woods?”
“Olta.”
I wait, but there are no more words coming. Perhaps that is why he doesn’t speak, because it is impossible for most people to speak without deception. A mute man can never be called a liar. But it also deprives us of the truth if there is a truth to be had.
“Were you planning to cut my throat before we were in full view of the gate? Or did you just intend to cripple me so that the Restless would take me and you would appear innocent of your crimes? Tell me, Urik, why have you turned on us, on your brothers? What have we done to you?”
His brow furrows. “Olta, I didn’t—”
A shuffling sound behind him and he turns, knife raised. I close the distance between us and slip my own blade into his throat and twist, tug it upward and withdraw. Then I step away as Urik’s head comes back around, his eyes like boiled eggs. He reaches for me, his hand clutching like that of his own murdered son in the garden. He chokes, sputters blood, winces, and then drops to his knees.
I watch him wheezing at my feet, blood spurting from the gash in his neck, and then I raise my eyes to the figure standing still and watching a few feet away from where he stood.
In truth, I do not know whether Urik betrayed me. It is possible, as all things are these days. The Nightcoats are gaining in strength. They whisper, build their existence atop a castle of secrets. That they have plans for Elldimek is not one of those secrets, only what the nature of those plans may be. They are cunning, ruthless, dangerous. And despite living within the confines of a stone prison, they yet make people disappear. I may never know if Urik was their emissary, or if I and my brother were truly targets. It is just as likely that I thirst for blood, that my discontent with the shadow my life has become has led me to take blood where I can find it, even if that means my own kind, even if I must falsely vilify them. In fighting the creature, in breathing this air, in seeing the woods, I recalled more than ever what it felt like to be a warrior. It is all I was ever meant to be, and without it I am a ghost... worthless, purposeless, a waste. As my father once said, “In the absence of other prey, a wolf will eat his own.”
It pleases me to think myself a wolf.
Before me is the cub, my brother, weaving before me, exhausted, changed, covered in filth. His face is made of chalk, his mouth hanging slack.
“Olta? Oh, brother, thank God it’s you.”
As I near him, teeth clenched and blade at the ready, I see the blue fire in his eyes.
I am mad. I am whole.
I am a warrior.
