"Boy, the caravan is getting ready to leave."
David turned from the window he'd been staring out of and retrieved his bags from the floor at his feet. "Thank you." The woman grunted, clearly long past done putting up with him, and stomped off. David made certain his bags were settled comfortably, then trudged downstairs and outside into the street and down to the square where the caravan was just finishing packing up.
He still could not believe that Sasha had left him, had gone on without him.
Sasha was the reason Reimund was dead, the reason the barriers were gone and everyone was dying and afraid to leave their houses. He was the reason everything was going wrong. David should have been glad they had parted ways, especially since he'd overheard the other day at dinner in the tavern that people were actively looking for him now—men like the sorcerers he'd knocked unconscious. What would happen if anyone of them caught Sasha?
He wasn't supposed to care, because Sasha was the source of the problem. Once he was caught and taken to Unheilvol to be dealt with there, everything would go back to the way it should be. But everything Sasha had ever said to him kept repeating in his head. He remembered all that Sasha had done for Black Hill. Everything he'd done for David.
He also remembered those kisses. For those few minutes, sitting in the campsite waiting for dinner, the world had seemed like a wonderful place to be. Then those stupid sorcerers had shown up and ruined everything.
"Ready to go?" A gruff voice asked, drawing David from his thoughts. He looked at the man, someone he vaguely recognized as having made the journey to Two Mill with him before, and nodded. "Up on your horse then, boy," the man said, and David obeyed. It was going to be slow travelling, but there were many like him who could not afford to wait any longer to journey to Unheilvol. The rest of the unusually large caravan were either desperate for supplies, or gambling that a city would be safer. Too many had already died in Oak Hill; David was sick with worry about the people in Black Hill. He wanted to go back, take his chances, but he knew he would be of no help to anyone there.
He kneed his horse into motion as the caravan headed out, keeping to the back of the group where he'd be mostly left alone. The falling snow coupled with the need to keep eyes alert for Sentinels made conversation impossible. David's thoughts drifted helplessly back to Sasha and that moment when the sorcerers ruined everything.
It wasn't the sorcerers' fault, however, as much he hated to admit it. He was the one who had ruined everything when he'd turned on Sasha. What was he supposed to have done, though? If not for Sasha, Reimund—and who knew how many others—would still be alive.
Sasha's words played over and over in his head. "Does your life really make you happy? Locked in your village, unable to travel without permission lest you be hunted down by beasts? Whipped and left for dead because you accidently knocked into a man in a crowded street? Tell me what about your life you love, David."
He'd loved Reimund. He loved Killian. After that … David couldn't think of a single thing. The harder he tried to argue with himself about it, that he'd been right to be angry with Sasha, the more he realized he'd just been afraid and had acted stupidly.
He would never get the chance to tell Sasha that, however, because Sasha was long gone and David did not know where to find him. Realizing that Sasha being lost to him hurt more than anything else forced him to accept what he should have realized back at the campsite.
David looked out over the landscape, willing Sasha to suddenly appear. He had no idea what Sasha was going to do, or what else he would change and by how much. Light, a future where he had no idea what would happen next sounded so much better than the certainty of knowing he would live and die fetching and bartering supplies in Black Hill.
Where would Sasha go? What was he planning to do? Was he still going to head for Unheilvol? That seemed the only place he could go if he wanted to stop Teufel. Would he still be there when David finally reached it? Shadows, he wished he could just forge on alone. If he had, he might have caught up to Sasha. Unfortunately, it was far more likely that he would have encountered a Sentinel and he had no way of fighting them. It was better to travel with the caravan, and he would just have to hope that he somehow ran across Sasha again in Unheilvol. David wished he had kept his stupid mouth shut.
He heaved a sigh and tried to distract himself, because if he kept playing the same thoughts over and over, he would drive himself to madness. There was nothing else to do, however, as they pushed on along a road that was barely visible. The snow fell steadily, just shy of being too heavy for travel to be possible, though if the wind kicked up it would become impossible.
Eventually, his mind drifted to his fate, to what he would hear when he entered Unheilvol as a penitent. If Sasha was messing with fate, however, if he really was chaos—well, obviously he really was—then would he still have a fate to be foretold? Would he have several? What would happen to the Seers if they could no longer See? Hadn't there always been Seers, even back in the days before Licht was lost?
What it would be like to go his entire life not knowing his fate? It was what he had done so far, why did that have to change? Why did he have to know how the rest of his life would play out? Why did he have to know how he would die?
Reimund …
If not for Sasha, Reimund would be alive. But David did not want to imagine a life where he had never met Sasha. He'd lost Reimund and gained Sasha on the same day and some part of him was all right with that. He did not like it, but … if that was the price …
Just thinking it made him want to cry, made him feel ashamed. He wanted Sasha back, though, wanted to say he was sorry, wanted a chance to see what might have come of those kisses. He never would, though, because he'd panicked and acted like a boy instead of a man.
David sighed and looked out over the landscape again, trying to think about something—anything—else, because thinking about Sasha would not bring him back. It was impossible to see much beyond the snow though, only hints of trees and a shadow that might have been the distant mountains or a figment of his imagination.
The only thing that mattered was there was no movement, no crunch of heavy feet moving a ponderous body through the snow, no fetid smell. David fervently hoped that it remained that way. He dreaded an attack like those he had already heard so much about.
When a halt was called a little while later, he froze briefly in surprise. Had so much time really passed? It did not seem like it … but then the alarm spread through the long caravan, whispers of a Sentinel corpse. David broke from the line and rode to the front, ignoring the shouts and questions thrown at him, until he reached the front of the line, where perhaps a dozen men were gathered around a massive mound of snow that had already been partially cleared away to reveal a dead Sentinel.
David tensed, relieved and stupidly hopeful when he saw the tell-tale whip marks across its snout and the ruined eye where a sword had been plunged into it, all the way into the brain. The slit throat was for good measure.
Sasha had killed it. Sasha had been there. "How long has it been dead?" he asked.
"A few days ago, I'd guess, though it's hard to say with the snow keeping the corpse frozen," one of the men said. "You look like you know who managed this."
Giving a casual shrug, David said, "I've seen dead Sentinels like this before—a sorcerer, they say, is behind it."
"The one they're hunting," another man muttered. "That one the High Seer ordered brought to him."
David shrugged again. "No idea. I just remember the dead Sentinels he left when I was coming back from Two Mill the last time."
"Hey!" a voice called out, causing the cluster of men to whip around, the guards going for their swords, the other men and women going for their knives. The source of the voice came up to them, panting and horrified. "Bodies! There's bodies over this way!"
They all followed the man's lead further down the road from the Sentinel's body and sure enough—four bodies left in the snow, two dead horses, and a third half-eaten. David turned away from the sight, grateful, at least, that the weather kept it from smelling and drawing further predators. A bit more searching turned up the remains of a campsite, and David realized he really had been so lost in thought more time had passed than he'd realized. Given the weather, they were making good time.
Unfortunately, they'd have to keep making it. The longer they were out there the likelier they were to run into Sentinels. If one Sentinel had attacked, it was likely others would as well. They were harder to prey upon while moving, though absolutely nothing was enough to stop a Sentinel when it was intent upon something.
Nothing, that was, except Sasha. David closed his eyes for a moment, recalling Sasha's smile, the warmth in his eyes, the way he always seemed to know the right thing to say. The feel of his mouth against David's, the way he felt when David had woken up to find they'd twined together in the night. How fierce he was in a fight, the ease with which he had defeated the Sentinels and Sorcerers that terrified all of Schatten.
The look on his face when David had turned on him.
It hadn't even been a look of shock, and that was the worst part. It had been resignation, as though Sasha had known the day would come and was sad only that it had arrived so soon. It was a look that said Sasha expected everyone to leave him, and David hated to have been one more disappointment in his life when Sasha had brought so much warmth and light to his own.
He just could not stay angry about Reimund, even if he should, even if it was wrong to accept it.
Someone spoke, drawing him from his thoughts. "These people were from Deer Run, even further southwest than Black Hill. I remember them because I urged them to wait to travel with us, but they feared a larger group would be easier to track in all this snow."
The man standing next to David snorted. "That will teach fools to listen to those of us who know better. They're lucky they made it as far as they did."
"They're dead," David said, anger sparking. "They're not lucky at all, and they weren't wrong. A smaller group would be harder to pin down in this weather. No sense in speaking ill of them now. We'd best just push on and hope we can find somewhere to rest that won't result in us winding up the same way."
Looking abashed, the man said, "You're right. Pity we can't burn them properly, give them a burial."
"We can on the way back, if we just mark the spot."
"I think the spot will be pretty clearly marked," another man drawled. "That Sentinel corpse isn't going anywhere, even if another one comes along to eat it when—if—the weather thaws."
Another man jerked around and glared at him, yanking away the cloth covering his mouth to say, "What do you mean 'if'? Of course it will! We won't be left in this winter forever, what are you trying to say?"
"I'm saying, this time of year the weather should be calming down, not getting worse," the first man said. "We all know it's wrong! The Sentinels are worse, the sorcerers are hunting one of their own because he turned rogue, which shouldn't even be possible, and the barriers have fallen. I'm saying that Lord Teufel is either punishing us, or has forsaken us! We're all thinking it; I'm just saying it!"
Another man bellowed in outrage and in the span of a breath, everything suddenly burst into violence. David scrambled away, retreating to the tree line, staring in horror as men and women alike began to brutally attack each other.
They were behaving like animals while the younger people—barely more than children, and some of them were children—all fled to join David. He urged them back until they were well hidden in the shadows of the forest.
When he was certain they were as safe as they could be, he returned to the raging group, grimacing at the blood smeared across the snow. So much of it had already turned to chunks of ice. His stomach churned.
Someone knocked into him, and David went crashing to the ground. He wiped snow from his face, kicked away the person hovering near him, rolled out of the way, and clambered to his feet. Everywhere he looked, people were fighting. What had made them snap so? Had it been brewing the entire time and he'd simply not noticed, too immersed in his own thoughts?
They shouldn't have been fighting. More than ever, cooperation was needed. Wasn't that how the people of Schatten had always gotten by? Yet when everything got difficult, suddenly they turned on each other. The words of an old admonition, repeated by the village priest to the point David had loathed hearing them, came suddenly and sharply to mind. People are not good at controlling their own lives. Left to shape their own fates, they choose the wrong paths and make poor choices. Better to leave our lives, our fates, in the hands of the gods, who know better than us where and how we should walk through life.
Watching them fight, David could not help but think that was true. The moment chaos descended and they all had to figure out what to do on their own, without trusting they were following their fate … the dead were mocked and they beat each other in the snow, leaving children stranded, leaving all of them vulnerable to the Sentinels.
"Enough!" he bellowed, more shocked than anyone when the word cracked out, drowning out all other sounds. Everyone stopped and stared at him. David stared back, hands balled into his fists at his side. "What is this accomplishing? Is this how you behave when we are all in danger—from starvation, from cold, from Sentinels. If Lord Teufel is punishing us, or has forsaken us, maybe it is because we have forgotten how grateful we should be to him for ensuring that such things as this never happen. He abandons us and you turn on each other like beasts! Your children are hungry and scared and Sentinels could be upon us at any moment. Is that what you want? Try proving to Lord Teufel that we deserve his love and protection and stop showing him why we do not."
They stared a moment longer and then he felt the anger leech away, saw it replaced by shame. Apologies were murmured and slowly they began to help each other, returned to the horses, and called to their children.
Shaking from residual fear, unable to believe all that he had said, David slowly made his way through the throngs back to his own horse. He mounted up and waited while everyone else got settled.
"That was well done, boy," the man beside him said gruffly, and he reached out to clap David on the shoulder. "If we are feeling Lord Teufel's wrath, then clearly you are meant to set us back upon the path of the faithful."
David shook his head. "I am nothing, but a boy from a small village, and no one fit to show anyone back to any path."
"You're on your way to hear your fate, right? I would not be surprised to learn your fate is much greater than you think. Thank you for stopping us before we did something we would have truly regretted."
"I'm just glad it's over," David said quietly, and he pulled his face mask back up as the caravan finally began to move again.
His stomach churned, his mind at war between all that he had just said and all he had been thinking about Sasha. Which was better—fate or chaos? He looked over the people around him and saw that no one was happy.
He remembered how unhappy he had been his whole life, so resigned to his fate that he had not realized he had been merely existing until he had spent two weeks with the strangest, but most alive man he had ever met.
That was it, really: Sasha had seemed alive. He was always so quiet, so contained, so still, but he had burned brightly inside. People didn't need fate, they didn't need Lord Teufel planning their lives before they drew a breath. They needed someone like Sasha, who lived, showed them how to live, without dictating those lives.
David's throat ached, raw with repressed emotion, and he thought were it not so cold he would have given over to tears. He wanted Sasha back, more than anything else in the world. If he was meant to die the next day, in the next hour even, he would consider it a life well lived if he only got to see Sasha one more time and say that he was sorry.
He needed to accept he had lost that chance, needed to move on and try to live … but the gnawing ache would not ease. Perhaps there might be a way to find Sasha in Unheilvol, as he had considered earlier. Surely, one way or another, Sasha would wind up there. All David had to do was get there in time and then wait. He could—
A deafening roar split the sky, a sound that shook him to the bones, shook the earth, spiked a paralyzing terror that left David crying despite the cold. All around him the others shouted in fear, and children began to wail, men and women alike weeping quietly. "What—what was that?" David finally managed to ask, then flinched and cowered as the horrific roar came again, and he barely kept his horse steady.
"That's a Great Sentinel," the man beside him said, voice trembling so badly that it took David a moment to understand the words. "Someone angered a Great Sentinel. But the Great Wall is nearly a full day's travel from here on a good day. Now? It would take at least twice that. Who would dare wander close to the Great Wall in times like these?"
Another roar came, louder and fiercer than ever—and then it was followed by another, though the second was different in tone. David realized it reminded him of the pained, dying cries of the smaller Sentinels that Sasha had killed in the village.
Realization struck him even as he cringed from another dying roar. Sasha wasn't going to Unheilvol—he was going straight through the Great Wall and into Sonnenstrahl.
It was far easier said than done, however, because legend said all of the Great Sentinels must be killed, or ordered to stand aside by Lord Teufel himself.
Sasha …
"Where exactly is the Great Wall from here?" he asked, yanking down his mouth cover to be better heard.
The man next to him did the same, eyeing him askance. "What does it matter? Let the fool die, if he wants to do something that mad. We wouldn't get there in time to help him, anyway."
"Just tell me!" David snapped.
Eyes widening, the man replied, "It's your fool neck boy, but Lord Teufel won't reward you for wasting your life on a fool. Head almost dead north, but after a day or so veer slightly west. It's hard not to run into it, really. I went close enough to see it once when I was a boy, before I heard my fate. Didn't see a Great Sentinel, by the mercy of Lord Teufel."
"Thank you," David said, and he kneed his horse to turn away.
"Boy—what do you think you are doing, truly? You're of more help here, like when you stopped the fighting. Don't throw all that away—"
David ignored him, urging his horse as fast as he dared in the weather, relieved when they reached the trees where the way was much clearer. He thought he heard voices calling after him, but he kept riding. Unheilvol was no longer an option; he was going to find Sasha no matter the cost.
The cost proved to be a very long, exhausting, and terrifying journey. He kept to the woods for as long as possible, making reasonable time since the ground was much clearer. The silence of it was unnerving, though not as terrifying as the occasional distant roar of a Sentinel. He jumped every time he thought he saw one, and did cry in relief when one passed by only paces away, seemingly too cold and exhausted to notice that food was nearby.
All too soon the forest came to an end, and he was forced to abandon his horse before plunging into so much snow and biting wind that David feared he would never be warm again. Even his mind was numb, unable to think past forcing his feet to continue moving—step, step, trip, stand, step, step, step. The misery of it made him want to give up. He had been a fool to leave the caravan on the tiny chance that he would find Sasha. But every time he thought of Sasha, he felt an ember of warmth, a spark of hope, and he was able to take another step.
Only once did he find shelter, in the remains of an old house that was more collapsed than not. How long he slept, he didn't know, but when he awoke, he was still cold and tired. He dragged himself out of the house, anyway, and resumed his exhausting journey. Only the dullest shreds of sunlight guided his way as he continued north for what he hoped was a day before he began to bear west.
What if he was wrong? What if he had hopelessly lost himself? It was better to die trying, however, than to live a life where he had not tried at all. Existing was safe. Living was dangerous, but he would face all the danger in the world if it led to Sasha.
Just as he began to give up, David ran—literally—into a wall. For a moment, he just clung to it, eyes closed and stinging with tears too cold to shed. When he finally got a hold of himself, he got his bearings and began to walk along the wall, hazarding a guess as to where he might find Sasha.
What if Sasha had gone the other way? What if David had taken too long and he was already somewhere else?
Ignoring the fear and doubt as best he could, David pushed on. He was tired, hungry, cold—so light-forsaken cold. If he failed, no one would look for him. He doubted anyone would miss him. That alone was enough to keep him going, keep him trying—until his foot caught on something and he tumbled into the snow with a yelp.
He scrambled up, tripped, and wound up on his back, out of breath and irritated with himself. He lay there until he calmed down, then drew a deep breath and climbed to his feet. David stared at what was just barely visible at the bottom of the snow—snow that was not nearly as deep as what he had just been trudging through. He knelt to get a closer look, pressed his fingers against it.
It was a road, an actual paved road. The stones were gray and dingy, cracked in most places and some places there were only holes where stones had been. Standing, he looked around—and then saw the enormous shape that towered so close to him. Looking it over, trailing his eyes all the way down its length, he realized it was the creature's tail he had tripped over.
A Great Sentinel—and it was dead. Disbelief and elation poured through David, making him forget the cold. "Sasha!" he bellowed. "Sasha!"
No one replied, but it wasn't as if he'd expected an answer. Hoped, perhaps, but not expected. David began walking around the dead Great Sentinel in hopes of a clue, any clue, as to where Sasha might be.
The Great Sentinel really was as massive as all the legends had said. It seemed the size of a few houses and taller than four or five of them stacked together. Walking around it seemed to take an age, and by the end he was trembling with the effort.
As he finished circling it, nearly back to where he had begun, he saw the door. It was near the enormous gate, which was made of thick, spiked iron bars and felt like magic even from such a distance. The bars looked as though each was as big as his arm, if not bigger; the entire gate looked too heavy to move. Strangely, when he looked through them he could see nothing—not a single hint as to what was on the other side of the Great Wall.
Strange, but at present it was the door beside the gate that really puzzled him. It must be a gatehouse, but why would there be a gatehouse at the Great Wall?
Well, at least he could rest, recuperate his strength, and try to figure out what to do next. Reaching the door, David shoved it open, stumbled inside, and managed to close it again. He turned around to take in his surroundings and cried out in shock when he saw the figure passed out before the dying remains of a fire.
Stumbling across the room as quickly as he could manage, he stiffly removed his pack and dumped it on the floor before he dropped down next to Sasha. Carefully looking him over, heart thudding in his chest, only after several minutes of checking and double checking did David slump back in relief. Sasha looked tired, and rather battered from his fight, but he was all right.
Wiping tears from his face, David set about rebuilding the fire, wondering absently who had left the pile of wood that was stacked in one corner. When the fire was burning and the little room began to warm up, he stripped out of his sodden clothes and quickly changed into dry ones. Next, he turned to Sasha, amused despite everything that he was once more nursing Sasha back to health. Tossing the wet clothes aside, he reached out to lightly stroke his fingers over the scars on Sasha's stomach.
How many more times would Sasha come so close to death? If David could choose his own fate, then he wanted that fate to be keeping Sasha alive.
Rifling through Sasha's bags, he found a change of clothes that did not smell great, but were dry. He quickly got Sasha changed and then set up a proper bed with both of their bedrolls. When that was done, he carefully dragged Sasha onto it, concerned and amused that he did not so much as stir.
After Sasha was settled he double checked the door was closed and threw the bar to secure it. He returned to Sasha and added a bit more wood to the fire before he lay down beside Sasha and drew their cloaks up over them. They fit together exactly as he remembered from those few nights they had shared a bed, and for the first time in days, David finally felt as though he was right where he was meant to be. Closing his eyes, he fell immediately to sleep.