CHAPTER 1.06 - RIAN’S STORY
The going’s getting tougher. They’re losing the light, and Rian is losing hope that they might arrive at their destination – wherever THAT is – before sundown. Everyone’s stretched, worn out, not least because the “blips” are getting longer and much more frequent. The time between has narrowed to 10 minutes or so, and the tooth-grinding sense of tension that manifests behind his eyes is becoming unbearable. He takes some solace that when the others become feral, animalistic, their actions are more flight than fight; however, keeping them in check would be difficult enough without a migraine.
Hugo’s retelling of his and Thae’s day was entertaining, the halfling’s voice melodious and the story peppered with humour. It’s worrying, however: these absences, these effects, seem to be covering miles at the very least. Rian pulls away from the thought of a city under the pall of this darkness. Not his problem.
He takes the gold loop from his pouch, looks through once more. No visions this time, not since the first, but he feels the pull and adjusts their course. He had guided them around some thorny brush over the past minute, and even that deviation seems to register with the trinket. They must be getting close. Closer.
He clears his throat. He doesn’t have Hugo’s gift for oratory, and certainly not the practice. But his allies need to focus on something. He wouldn’t choose to be in the deep forest after dark, and he’s good at this.
He is clumsy, his speech clipped and uncomfortable, but Rian does his best.
-x-
YESTERDAY AFTERNOON
He curses quietly. This is so senseless. The grey wolf he just killed – that he spent hours tracking – needn’t have died. He had picked up its spoor early today, his previous priorities eclipsed. He had seen the blood, smelled the poisoning in its excrement, and that was that. As he pursued the wolf, his concerns were justified; it was erratic, maddened, but seemed so unwell that it couldn’t focus on individual prey. And very much beyond its normal range. Hence three hours of careful but hurried tracking: a beast out of its mind HAD to be put down.
As he kneels over the dead wolf, its ills are obvious. One of Dolf’s idiots, he’d bet. The shaft of a crossbow quarrel is embedded in its haunch. A couple of days old at least, the wound stinking. It didn’t strike too deeply but had snapped near the fur as the wolf charged through the forest. Classic bandit: take a potshot at an animal, hit poorly and don’t finish the kill.
Quickly as he can, Rian skins the beast. A terrible hide, given the wound, but he’s damned if the creature dies pointlessly. Then, still frowning, he hefts the carcass into the higher branches of a nearby tree. He reckons the crossbow bolt wasn’t poisoned but doesn’t want to risk the forest’s larger scavengers with that uncertainty.
Less dissatisfied, Rian turns towards home.
-x-
A half hour later, he is pressed against the trunk of a tree, listening. Footsteps, uneven but racing, as someone human-sized seems to be hitting every root and tangle of brush. Sounds like a man, panting and wheezing. Rian is about to swing out from his spot when the running stops with a tumbling impact.
He pokes his head out and sees a man lying prone, not far from the tree root that tripped him. He’s dressed in cheap but previously professional-looking town clothes and a long but thin jacket entirely unsuited to autumn in a forest. Rian fears the figure’s dead but sees his chest rise with a bubbling gasp. Sounds neither healthy nor imminently dangerous to Rian’s safety. He rushes over to the man, still careful to minimise the sound of his footfalls, carefully rolls him onto his back.
Rian’s eye is drawn to the second poorly aimed crossbow wound of his day; a large bloodstain spreading across the once-white shirt. The man’s wet breaths and the angle of the shaft tell him the bolt was deflected by one of the man’s ribs. Not as lethal as it might have been, but the lung is punctured. As if to confirm, the man coughs, a bubbling of blood-tinged saliva – and a weird expulsion of dust – spilling from his lips. Pale brown eyes fly open, turning urgently to Rian’s face.
He adopts as calm an expression as he can manage, murmurs quietly to the man. “Be calm, friend, you’re going to be okay”. The man’s eyes begin to turn to the shaft in his torso, but Rian interposes himself, trying to lay the man back into a comfortable position. The man’s gasping for breath, trying to speak, but Rian places a hand on his solar plexus, shushing his desperation. On the edge of his perception, Rian hears the distant sound of pursuers approaching them. “I’m sorry friend, this is going to hurt. Please be still” whispered while tearing the material of the man’s shirt away from the bolt, other hand still pinning him.
The man flails, a gurgling pain noise. Rian tries to apply pressure to the wound, hold the wobbling shaft still, however the man is slipping a couple of fingers into his coat pocket. “Shhh, shhh, be still” Rian whispers, wincing as the man’s movement shifts the bolt between his thumb and forefinger. He curls his fist around the shaft, feeling a fresh swell of blood soaking his hand. The man persists, however, fingers feeling for something and emerging from the pocket with a loop of shiny metal. Rian whispers urgently: “The people who attacked you are on their way; we can get out of…” but cuts off. The man’s eyes are wild, his head shaking as he holds up the loop. With the whipping of his head, Rian notices more silty dust shaking from the man’s hair but can’t process this as he hears their pursuers approaching. He’ll be visible to the individuals crashing through the undergrowth within 15 seconds or less.
He tries to calm the man, more soothing noises than words. The man’s mouth moves, desperately trying to communicate, but his chest spasms, unable to take a breath. Dumbly, the man tries to slip the loop into Rian’s busy hand. Seeing no better option, Rian takes the trinket. Where he thought previously it was a simple loop of gold, he now notices a smaller loop on its edge, as though made for a thin cord or chain. As he palms the object, he mutters feverishly to the man, hoping he’ll allow Rian to try to save his life.
His heart drops as the victim retches a wet cough. This time, the man ejects a dark red spume of blood with grit suspended in the thick liquid. His eyes grow blank, rolling to focus somewhere beyond the forest canopy. Rian mutters “I’m sorry” but immediately breaks for the dense, shadowed foliage, angling diagonally away from the approaching sounds.
-x-
Hours later, after sundown, Rian finally reaches his stockade. He’d stayed in concealment just within sight of the interactions Wiln had described. He’d focused less upon the furious man in the red cloak, staring instead at the slim, tanned warrior leading the bandits. Nevin was obviously not to be trifled with on their first meeting, and deadly competent. While the townie stormed and raged beside him, Nevin’s eyes were scanning the forest towards Rian’s location. Time to go, while the group was distracted.
His return journey took even longer than the wolf pursuit, as Rian was unwilling to leave tracks towards his home. He finally angled himself towards the stockade after a full hour with no sign of pursuers on his trail.
He stays in the undergrowth, scanning the gates and walls, listening for any movement. After a further 10 minutes, he enters cautiously. Sees everything in order, checks the little telltales on his leatherworking shed and the front door to confirm nobody has disturbed either, as he steps diagonally across the threshold to his simple living space. Spends a little reluctant time scraping the wolf pelt, ensuring no fat or tissue remains on the skin, hangs it near the stove and collapses onto the narrow bed.
With a sigh of frustrated exhaustion at the bizarre, wasted day, Rian’s hand goes to the gold loop. He holds it up, wondering why this thing was worth the death of the strange man. Both, apparently, to his attackers and the man himself. The cold metal provides no answer as he scans its edges, Rian thinking about getting some food into his belly.
As he holds it up to the light, Rian happens to look through the larger loop, and he is suddenly happy to be horizontal as hiis perrceeeppppptionnn rolllllls awaaaayyyyy…
He’s in the middle of the forest, his forest but alien. As his consciousness is pulled away from him, he has a dreamlike sensation of being somewhere he should recognise, but here the trunks of the trees are stark white, the foliage inky black. There’s no colour at all, black tar oozes from the leaves, emerges from the naked trunks like blood in the nighttime. His vision tunnels then, projecting in a definite direction which Rian feels in his groin, his chest and his head. Roughly in that order.
-x-
He wakes hours later, still in the darkness before dawn. He feels nauseous, fatigued, his dreams spent wandering the unsettling monochrome forest. He’s unable to tell whether the sensation of being lost in an alien version of his forest was anxiety or something more. He looks to his hand, still grasping the…golden loop. Instinctually, he raises it to his eye. He panics, worrying he’ll pass out again – instead, he feels the same pull, west-south-west by his reckon. His head stops spinning, pulling, after a few seconds. Rian sighs, gets up, uncomfortable thoughts filling his head. As ever when things are complex, Rian busies himself.
-x-
A little over an hour later, dawn still some time away, Rian hears a firm knock on the gate of the stockade. Shit. Shit!
He grabs his pike, approaches the gate “Who’s there?” he asks gruffly. There is a moment’s pause, then his stomach twists. “Rian? Rian, it’s Nevin.”
This is bad, but he needs to know HOW bad. After a couple of silent seconds, conscious of the man shifting outside, Rian opens the gate. Nevin looks first at the pike, then into his face, questions in his piercing blue eyes, as Rian spits out a “What?”. The pike isn’t pointed at him, not quite, but Nevin speaks quickly:
“Sorry to bother you, big man; listen, I brought Sid here along, but he’ll stay off your property.” Nevin gestures to the edge of the trees Rian had cleared. A short bandit with a crossbow, unloaded, held by his side, looks surprised to be called out. Waves awkwardly. Rian stands like a statue. Nevin clears his throat “Can I come in?”
Rian’s silent, voice choked in his throat. Stupid, suspicious! Another couple of uncomfortable seconds as he pictures his shack. Is it obvious he’s leaving? He thinks not.
Finally, Rian steps aside, nodding as he narrows his eyes at “Sid”. Nobody he recognises.
Nevin steps into the garden area, stops to allow Rian to lead him to his small home. Rian feels wooden, as he coaxes his limbs to move. He steps straight in through the door; the hatch is secured when he’s here. Wordlessly, he steps to his tiny kitchen, puts a warm kettle onto the hotplate over the stove. Feeling like a marionette in a show titled ‘Guilt!’, he pulls out mugs and a jar of tea leaves.
Standing on the threshold, unwilling to exceed his welcome, Nevin flashes his crooked, humourless smile. “No offence, big guy, but you have anything stronger?”
Rian grunts, moves to a small keg of weak beer, fills the mugs from there. Gestures for Nevin to sit at his table, the single chair. The sharp-nosed man nods assent, some thanks, sits. ‘He’s looking around the room, this looks all wrong, I’m caught’ Rian thinks, smelling his own anxious sweat, certain the other man will too. Instead, he accepts the proffered mug, sips the dark brown liquid, sighs appreciatively. Nevin seems lost in thought for a moment, sighs again. This time, Rian’s blood freezes – he sounds frustrated. Shitshitshit! Then he speaks.
“Listen, did you see anything…weird yesterday? Like, out in the forest?” He looks into Rian’s face as he mutters “No”. The man’s head begins to shake. Rian realises his pike is out of arm’s reach, and pointless in this small room anyway. The pair of wicked curved swords at Nevin’s waist could be out and into his flesh in a blink. Rian has seen that before. His muscles tighten, ready to leap for the polearm, but Nevin’s focus pulls past Rian, somewhere deep in his own thoughts. He shakes his head again, drains the mug. “No, no. ‘Course not.” He makes a noise, sucking air through his front teeth.
“Wish we’d buy beer from you, I mean on top of the armour.” He looks again into Rian’s eyes. “Listen, man, I’m really sorry to bother you. You know how ‘Dolf gets…” Nevin tails off. A second later, Rian starts as the man stands sharply, chair legs squeaking against the floor. “I’ll get out of your hair.”
As Rian watches from the gate, Nevin gives a sharp whistle to Sid and stalks off, starting to circle north-northwest towards their encampment. Sid flicks him an embarrassed smile, trying casually to catch up to the man who is definitely not his master.
Rian, doubt dispelled, prepares to leave immediately.
