Olen paced the empty cave as strong wet winds blew against the adit. She had woken to an absent Bakku, who had at least set a strong fire before abandoning her. She warmed her hands by the flames while searching the mountains high and low. It was early dawn and the world was turning from black to a misty grey. She was debating whether to track him through the storm when his hazy figure lumbered through the gale like a ghost ship at sea.
He ducked into the cave without greeting and lifted his burlap sack.
She said, “I thought you had disapp—”
He scooped her up in remarkably warm hands and placed her gently inside the sack. He lifted the bag over his head and slid his arm through a strap he had sewn during the night. He had stitched a sort of a trader’s pack that hung high over his shoulder and down his back. She poked out of the bag and stood like an arrow out the top of a quiver. She crossed her arms and placed her elbows on his shoulders, resting her chin on her forearms.
“We climb. Very steep,” he said. “Very cold.”
Earlier he had held her legs when he had run, but to scale the Rückraadt he would need his hands. He could no longer hold her, so he had made a satchel that could. And when the chilling highland air turned her lips to ice, she could duck inside for warmth. He had done this for her, she thought. Last evening she thought he was only mending holes but he had been fashioning a protective carriage, for her. It was a strange sensation, much like when he had first come back and rescued her, to know you lived in another’s thoughts. People had done kind things for her in the past, but only in trade. Bakku did things like this that let her know he thought and cared for her even when he was getting nothing in return. And now he wanted to carry her over a dangerous and icy mountain to safety.
“I trust you,” she said, and they started out immediately.
He first walked back the same path he had come through in the storm. The winds had calmed some with the slowly rising sun, but still they bit at her face. He seemed eager today, almost impatient as he hurried forward.
“Why are we leaving so early?” She asked. “We haven’t even eaten.”
He pointed ahead to a dark tangle on the ground. A bird, large and twisted lay in a heap of feather and bone. One crushed wing hooked under its frame while the other lay splayed out wide. Together its wingspan was nearly as wide as Bakku’s. A long beak with rows of razor sharp teeth hung open in an eternal scream. A dead eye, forever open and manlike, stared at her. And even without the spark of life behind it, the eye looked disturbingly aware.
“Scion vultures,” he said. “They have followed us all along.”
It had flown low in the night, he told her, and he had been waiting for it. It was Olen’s own words that had tipped him off. They had not seen any wildlife this high in the mountains at all, and no meat-eating scavenger would waste its precious energy scanning the mountaintops. She had jokingly said maybe the vultures were searching for them, and she was right.
“It flew low,” he said. “I caught it with a rock.”
“It wanted to eat us?” she asked, as the corners of her mouth turned down in disgust.
“When I got this one, the others flew off,” he said. “These are not scavengers, they are messengers.”
He adjusted the shoulder pack and she shuffled her feet.
“We have not had meat since the river,” she said. “Are we just going to leave this thing behind?”
He walked over to the carcass and kicked it over. Bones and tendons lay exposed to the air, as if it had sat rotting for a week. Fungal meat hung off the bones leeching a grey-green foam.
“It’s rancid!” she said, pulling back.
“Made to decay quickly,” he said. “He wanted it to leave no trace of itself.”
“Who wanted that?” she asked.
“Janus Brynn,” he said and turned up the mountain. “I was a fool. He has found me.”
***
They had entered a pattern, Philippa and Koertig, a pattern that left her aching for nightfall. He would greet her coldly as she began her long shifts. She would clean him, feed him, and tend to his wounds as medics and soldiers came through. She would speak when spoken to, often disregarding his gentle curses of the Lowtown folk, or quietly reasoning away his barking rebukes when her service was less than perfect. But as the sun fell low in Midtown and they were left alone in the upper-floor room, she would clap shut the wooden blinds and his words would take on a gentler tone. And she would once again feel desired by this desirable man. They had been lovers for two weeks.
“Thank you, dear Philippa,” he said, as she handed him his evening tea. He palmed the tin cup and inhaled its honeyed steam.
She had placed folded blankets behind his head and back and helped him to sitting. He dipped his head at her, a silent command to sit also. She eased herself to his cot and straightened the blankets at his hips.
“Tea was the one thing my father and I disagreed on,” he said, taking a sip. “He favored the boiled-bean infusion Swarhee-folk choke down twice a day. I prefer to sip the essence of Eisen’s own green leaves.” He handed her his cup which she made to set aside, but he said no and told her to drink. She held the wet lip of the cup against her own and sipped. “In that way alone,” he continued, smiling contentedly, “I took after my mother.”
She chanced asking him a question about his parents.
“Both gone,” he said, letting the words drift away like candle smoke. “One a victim of Aurling magic, the other a casualty of indiscretion.”
Even during his twilight calm, she dared not equate them both as orphans. To Koertig, an orphan was more than a parentless child. It was an unwanted and unnecessary issue from an inferior line. Koertig may be parentless, but he was not unnecessary.
“Father and I agreed on everything else,” he continued, “including the need to eradicate the Aurling menace.” He said his father had a vision he had failed to achieve. He had been a warrior who hoped to end wars, a compatriot who believed in the wholesomeness of this land’s people, and a wise man who saw in Eisen the great land it could be. “I believe that is still possible, Philippa. Once the Aurlings and all their impurity is gone, I envision a time when sheathed swords shall maintain the peace.”
She held the tea to his lips and he sipped. He closed his eyes and intoned as she set the tin on the table, seeing with prescient surety the shared night before them.
“I had thought simply joining the army would satisfy my father’s memory, but Philippa, he haunts me,” he said, reaching out for her shoulder. He said the elder Koertig knows of his son’s failure. He knows how he blindly let the Aurlings and Demis infiltrate the land, and how he was so quickly defeated by just one. As he spoke, he slid his fingers behind her neck and traced his thumb over her ear. “It is my father I see when I dream, and it is his vision I fight for. I must defeat these creatures. Until then he will forever haunt me.”
She sat silently as he spoke, guiding his hand with a shift of her neck, a turn of the arm. This to Koertig was a conversation. He spoke lovingly of his family and achievements, she sat quietly transfixed. She was okay with this, even happy at times. To be allowed to sit beside Harner Koertig as he stroked her and spoke of his greatest hopes and fears was something she never would have fantasized about just two short months ago. So certain was she of her role as a mute witness that she did not even answer when he asked her a question.
“I said, what haunts you, Philippa?” he asked again. “Is there a ghost in your life, like how my father haunts mine?”
She did not answer right away, though she knew her ghost immediately. She took his hand off her shoulder and held it in her lap.
“All I ever knew was my father,” she said finally, her two fingers stroking the blonde hairs on his forearm. “Haggart says I was too young to remember him, but I do, to a degree. Images, sounds. I remember big hands,” she said, holding up Koertig’s own large hand. “Big hands lifting me up, and a wide belly that I kicked at with bare toes. Hickory,” she said cheerily. “He must have worked in a smoke house because to this day the smell of hickory…” She drifted in her thoughts and shook away tears. “His voice,” she continued. “In my dreams I still hear his voice, thick and echoey, like we’re in a tight room even in the vast outdoors. It’s just my name, but he says it in a way like no other. ‘Philippa’ he says, and each time it’s like he is trying it out for the first time, and falling in love with it.”
Koertig listened quietly as she spoke, and when she finished, he reached over his body to the bedside table and again offered her his tea. “You must have been very special to him.”
They had entered a pattern, Philippa and Koertig, a pattern every morning she told herself she should break. Hours of cold disregard from Koertig melted away in the quiet evenings as he sat her on his bedside and spoke of his dreams. Koertig at night talked of wild mountain flowers, and youthful springs in Illsbrook. He had a vision for Eisen she could easily believe in, and a vast beating heart buried below years of soldierly indoctrination. And most importantly, at these times, Koertig showed her a kindness and attention like she had never known. Nighttime Koertig was a man she could love, she thought, as he placed her hand on his chest. But even as he pulled her in, and she resisted not a whit, she knew that in the morning, icy shame would greet her from her lover’s eyes.
She would let him have her again, and for another night she would let herself believe she could one day have him too. She lay beside him and spoke of her time in Illsbrook as he rolled his thumb over her bottom lip.
And in this pattern, two months passed.
***
Olen stood in the sack, leaning on Bakku’s shoulders as he hiked up the mountain. When the rocks got too steep, she ducked inside as he climbed to the next crest, pulling himself up with strong arms. When his pace evened, she popped backed out to his shoulder. They had entered the snow caps and could see the crests ahead. He was making for a dip in the mountaintop where they could slip through to the western lands. It was so bitterly cold already that she was glad they would not have to climb all the way to the peak. A winter storm blew snow in their faces.
They reached a valley-like bowl that rose right up to the crest. The snow collected here year-round and was deeper than they would ever know. Bakku’s heavy footprint sunk knee-deep with every step. She ducked into the sack as it dragged in the snow below her. She was curled tightly inside clutching the pot and shoving aside frozen apples, while wearing the warmest clothes she could imagine. Her coat transformed between hides and furs she had seen traded in the square, searching for one that would trap in her heat. Now a bear skin jacket, now otter pelt slacks. Still the winter chill sliced through to her bones, and still Bakku climbed, nearly naked to the world, laboring ahead. There would be no camp in this weather. There was no stopping now and no turning back. He had to make it over the top.
And this was how they climbed for the entire day, Bakku plodding up the wintry mountainside, the icy winds blowing him back. He trudged slowly, and when it was vertical he climbed, forcing out grunting breaths with each pull. She poked her head out of the sack and was blasted by a sandstorm of frozen mist. The world was a white-out swirl with hints of grey on the horizons. The warmer lands far below were lost in the blowing snowstorm.
“Stay down,” he called through the gale. “Too cold.”
She ducked back inside as winds whipped against the sack like flags in a storm. Bakku’s heavy breaths were soon replaced by anguished groans as he forced his legs up the snow-packed mountainside, his icy chain banging against ice and stone. Winds blasted against him, forcing him back, but he kept moving forward. With slow plodding steps he strained on, while Olen bounced around inside the large sack and tried to stay warm. The cold picked its way through the porous burlap, setting her teeth chattering, and her temples aching. She wished for a fire and a rest to settle her stomach and head. Just a small camp for an hour or two, not long. She would make the fire herself. She kept these thoughts to herself as Bakku suffered up the mountainside. He growled, forcing strength into his legs and arms.
She could not have done this alone. She would have been captured or killed by the gores that first night, or would have fallen away to whatever world her magic had opened up before her. Only Bakku could have gotten her over this mountain, and for that she was not ashamed. She had always been independent, trying her best to live by her own set of rules and tending to her own needs, but some things she just had to admit she could not do. She only hoped there was a way to pay him back.
And still he climbed. Time and direction disappeared from her reckoning as she tossed about. There were sideways jerks as he reached for distant grips, and quick weightless leaps as he flung himself over rifts. All along she banged and bobbled in the frozen sack as the hours edged by more slowly than she had ever encountered. There was a great moan and a vast upward lift as he crested one of the lower peaks. He shuffled ahead on smoother footing, groaning with each step as the burlap sack buffeted against her.
Words mingled with his moans, distant words, confused. She lifted her head out of the sack and was blinded. They had broken through the clouds, and the sun was brilliant and wide. She wore a fox-fur hood and riding goggles. Ice formed quickly around the corners of her glass.
“What did you say?” she called out, yelling into the harsh winds.
“I did not give up,” he said through stuttered breaths, but it no longer sounded like Bakku. Snowy crystals had formed around his eyes and nostrils. His mouth hung open as he gasped for air, and his lips were white with frost. The world was a whiteout of snow and sunlight, and she was freezing in the blazing sun. Still Bakku moved forward. His voice was weak, childlike. Still he climbed. “They chained me, but I did not give up,” he said.
“That’s right!” she yelled at him. “You are unstoppable Bakku! You never give up!” And she thought maybe that was why she cared for him so. He had suffered for centuries in that prison, compared to her brief time in the Ward. And yet he still fought to survive, much like she had always held on to her dream for something more than the orphanage.
“So many years,” he said. His eyes were wild, as the ice had seemingly seeped past his scarred flesh and frozen his mind. Ragged layers of frost-bitten skin, like frayed hems from her skirt, hung off his fingers and palms. His feet were lost in the snow. “I rubbed the chains at my ankles,” he said proudly, but sounding near death. “That was all I did. I did not care how long it took. How long was it?” He asked, turning his head to her. His eyes pleaded with hers as the winds whipped at his long ice-covered ropes of hair. She hardly recognized him.
“Over two hundred years!” she shouted, saying the words but finding it impossible to truly fathom such an expanse of time. Two hundred years in chains, while she had lived twelve in practical freedom.
“Two hundred…two hundred years,” he repeated, as if trying to make sense of the words himself. He trudged ahead and climbed. “I twisted the chain for fifty years, and then one day,” he made a snapping motion with his hands. “Three more chains to go! But I never gave up. They did not know, stupid gores. They would come. Clicking and biting,” he said, pulling himself over a ledge as nature’s fury ravaged them for their trespass. “But they never checked my chains. I was patient. Two hundred years, four chains, and the stupid gores did not know. When my hands were free, I started on the bars. I never gave up!” he shouted defiantly, as if to Brynn himself.
“And you never will!” Olen called out, the chill wind taking her breath away.
The ground leveled out and the winds eased. The mountain dropped down below revealing green fields far beyond. They had reached the crest. The colorful lush lowlands stretched ahead to the horizon.
“Stupid gores,” Bakku said and started down the slope.
Olen’s body screamed for her to get out of the cold, but she refused to listen. She wrapped her arms around Bakku’s frozen neck and gave him what little warmth she had left.
“Stupid gores!” she agreed and kissed his jowls.