CHAPTER 1.50 – FAREWELL TO HIGHBARROW: III
Hugo wakens, scared to open his eyes for fear of bleeding to death. His tongue feels grotesque, huge, some submarine species filling a mouth tasting like sewage. He had meant to drink his fill of water before bed but the strength of the orc spirit and Atheran’s grim tale had swept the thought from his drunken head. After she had described the death of her friends, the woman had sat in silence for a long while. Amidst a deluge of survivor’s guilt, he suspects.
Just as Bertak had broken the silence, clearing his throat with an apologetic look, Atheran’s radiant green eyes had fixed each of them in turn. The woman intoned: “This life ye’ve chosen makes ye feel invulnerable. Godlike. We had won and won and…” He reads her pause, her shame. She had crawled away, hidden, poured a fortune in magical healing potions down her throat. But nothing could return her leg. Nothing could return her friends.
“It don’t play fair. There’s always something in the world as can kill yer. Easily.” She looked pained as Bertak placed a calming hand on her shoulder, regret etching her face. “Death’s hontin’ all of us, don’t go chasin’ it.” They had sat with the discomfort as the smith steered the elder towards her bed, until Rian bade them goodnight, muttering something about an early start in the morning.
That’s already aspirational by the time Hugo extracts himself from bed, but everyone seems to be on a go-slow, so it’s afternoon by the time they hike up the hill north of town. They pass the home of the family they reunited. A conscious decision, to leave unheralded, allow the villagers to get on with living. The tiny settlement has already been as generous as they could afford. Hugo wonders whether that was one of Atheran’s contentions. That the more a community needed you the less they could spare in reward.
Not that he could have asked for more. He arrived here mostly bereft, little more to his name than the clothes in which he stood. The village gave him the literal gift of survival. His mind flits to Nina and her mum. He grins at that, recalls the villagers dancing to their music. Thae also looks to be leaving on a high. Hugo wonders if the cleric had doubts similar to his own upon leaving Caladria. Hopes Thae’s were assuaged by the response of the populace, seeking out the cleric in growing numbers.
Rian, always hard to read, seemed at least to have felt helpful. He had joined the hunts, colluded with Bertak and nailed down exactly where in the forest their wanderings had planted them. He had the option to feel depressed. After all, for having travelled such a large circuit, they were scant miles to the north of the city. Then again, he realises, he has travelled a much greater personal distance. And found himself surrounded by allies he trusts with his life.
Anuk remains a mystery. Nonplussed by the village, and a member of their party while it’s convenient. Still, she seems less brittle, less rageful than the woman he first met. If only by a small measure.
He thinks back to Atheran’s tirade, wonders if the woman is missing the point entirely. Wonders if, back in the day, she felt as denuded of choice as he does now. They seem to have had little more than a finger on the tiller of their journey thus far. No choice on where to proceed, only how. But maybe, he realises, that renders Anuk’s vote to remain the most decisive. She has the option of carving her own path, now that she can locate the road.
It’s too much to ponder under such a hangover. And way too much guesswork without data. He focuses on not falling onto his face as they struggle through the undergrowth.
-x-
It takes them longer than it should to reach Thaesurala’s Ebwyn. This time, though, the existence of the glade seems obvious. The feel of the forest shifts as they pass into the dryad’s true Teril, rather than the bloated shadow cast by her birth pangs. Or her unnatural foetus, in combat with her own nature. It would be subtle unless one knew or was trained to spot it. The roots are no less snarled, the undergrowth no less dense, the forest maybe even more threatening. But there’s a sense of order overlaying the matted, vibrant nature. It’s fighting and competing and willing to kill for its survival. But things are in their place, every element provided with what it needs without allowing any one to achieve primacy. Hugo’s heard it said that a perfect compromise leaves everyone involved equally unhappy.
The dryad’s influence is evident in the degree of health, the preponderance of beautiful colours surrounding them, but also in less subtle ways. Around the point where his brain confirmed they had passed into Thaesurala’s sphere of influence, they had scared some small birds roosting in the treetops. His flagging focus was shocked into alertness with the explosion of tiny bodies launching into the air. He could perceive the mass of the flock staying together like a cloud. And two tiny birds cut a much less organic, easily perceived, line directly towards the giant oak tree.
The clearing in the shadow of the massive Ebwyn is again populated with an array of critters. Seemingly a shifting cast of whatever was in the area just living their lives under the spirit’s benevolent glow. Most of the new inhabitants lope, hop or otherwise bolt into the forest at their arrival, but the huge bear from their last visit remains, radiating lack of concern. Hugo fancies he can see the beast’s calculation. “These guys again with their noise. Then again, CUDDLES.” With the sun still moments above the horizon, a huge canine shape apparates in the tree’s shadow, coming into focus at the foot of the child’s nest.
The kid itself, definitely scanning the returning arrivals, but bereft of any warmth or invitation, is in the arms of its mother. Thaesurala, ever gracious, appears happy to see them. Something’s off, however. She seems distracted. They have many reasons to impose on the dryad’s hospitality. Beyond their current physical state, they wished to check in en route to the bandits, whom they still feared might cause her some problems. The final decision to enter the Teril centred around their dearth of options surrounding what he thinks of as the Stone of Undeath. It concerns him how often he has to consider unlife these days.
He’s certain the thing isn’t linked to Nobody. Certainly, it seems to have rested in the barrow for centuries or more, but he held out some hope that a magical being of her status, bound to life itself, might have some means of…dealing with the cursed object. And again, he honours the bonds of Atheran’s appeals to them. Yet another instance where he feels compelled by the series of events and responsibilities radiating out from them. No real choices, beyond between bravery and panic, doing the right thing or more people getting hurt. It doesn’t make him feel any better when Thae guesses the source of the dryad’s awkwardness.
She makes all the correct moves when they carefully open the pouch containing the obsidian stone, hisses her contempt for the thing. But she seems to have no solution for it. In one of his fantasies, she would bury it under the tree, into the guts of her teril, its evil beaten back by nature. Supernature? But of course not. She wouldn’t, couldn’t jeopardise the woods, her home, her son with such a plagued thing.
Then the cleric practically jumps, launches into a flood of the elvish they use to commune with the woman of the wilds. Anuk rolls her eyes, turns to Rian and Hugo, mutters: “She expected us to return with her…with the man.” Hugo watches her distaste turn into disbelief. At least he reads in her a similar contempt to his own. He muses. “Well, maybe if you’re bound to live in a square mile or so, the whole world feels tiny.” She smirks at his rationale, which he is certain lands with more of an acerbic twist than he intended. Still, the pale woman turns to assist Thae in explaining their return sans monochromatic lovers. As Hugo and the big man become the centre of an undignified tussle between the mastiff and brown bear demanding their attentions.
-x-
The misunderstanding cleared up, Thaesurala returns to her previous kindness and civility, albeit with an element of distance. They aren’t friends, Hugo thinks, not truly. Merely travelers on a similar path for a short while. The woman is truly alien to them, the son even more visibly so, though the distance could be bridged. Conceivably, anyway. But this meeting is more transactional. Bring the nature witch her heart’s desire and then maybe they can have a true meeting of minds. He would be more disappointed were it not for the true, heartfelt adoration the dryad lavishes on his squirrel companion. Three obviously reciprocates the adulation.
The squirrel is, again, off about his own business. Hugo feels truly conflicted about tomorrow’s departure. Should he leave without Three he would, of course, be devastated. But he’d know in his heart that his little buddy would have a safe life, a bounty of his favourite foods, a fucking FOREST PROTECTOR spoiling him. He tries to ignore the thought, spider legs in his guts at the thought of leaving the last piece of his old life behind him. Besides, they have made promises about tomorrow, about the bandits, that he is uncertain they can deliver. Or survive.
He sleeps restlessly, ambushed by anxious dreams.
-x-
They are, at least, more refreshed setting out from Thaesurala’s clearing. Certainly, better hydrated and nourished. Three is passed out in his pocket, the little guy replete with seeds. Hugo taps the bulging seed pouch. Since it was created, the uncanny weaving of plant fibres has dried. Now, it is more akin to something made by a mortal. Marginally. The party has agreed that Thaesurala cannot be considered a contact or hostess until they have managed to find her particular needle in the haystack of humanity. Or at least some news. Rian’s monocle continues to point them towards Oakbridge, Hugo postulating that the thing might be following stages of his, of Nobody’s, journey, rather than indicating his location. That could get thin really quickly, particularly if they continue to be hunted.
His thoughts swim to the bandits, these Iron Rams. Rudolf, Dolf as Rian knows him, shares a little of their fate. At least a vague similarity to his, Thae’s and Rian’s. Not that Anuk’s offered them more than a hint of her past. Dolf was minor nobility, a duke or some such. House Mentari if Hugo recalls it correctly. Held in some regard, particularly for ferocity and martial prowess, during his youth. That was when the kingdom was at war. Or had claimed to be. Sadly for him, young Rudi wasn’t designed for peace. It’s a forty-year-old story, so Hugo isn’t clear on the details, but he’s pretty sure the young man transitioned from eternal war to eternal vice. As though his appetites were endless, his bloodthirst unslakeable by drink, drugs and whores.
By some point, his debts and his family’s repute became irreparable. Dolf took the Mentari family crest, a boar’s head in iron, and channelled his fury and disappointment that his rank counted for nothing once his coffers were empty.
He might perhaps have chastened, but Hugo suspects he simply found another eternal war. This time, it was waged against the throne that had turned its back on him. Given that Rudi’s new war would be waged with the dregs of society and escapees from Caladria’s justice, he would never truly represent more than an irritation to the kingdom. No doubt some civil servant with an abacus kept track of the severity of the Iron Rams’ thievery. And compared it to the cost of hunting down a canny and imaginative leader of men. The fact he hadn’t been swiped proved that Dolf and his people were considered little more than a mosquito.
-x-
That comforting calculation takes on a very different shape when their afternoon of eastward travel breaks onto a huge plain stripped out of the living forest. They had been smelling the bite of sea air from the north, therefore Hugo’s algebra had already added smuggling, maybe piracy, to the span of Dolf’s operation.
Crouched at the eaves of the forest, they shared a sense of dismay as they confronted a giant stockade fence surrounding an actual keep. Standing to three stories, the walls around it lined with walkways and punctuated with watchtowers, the Rams’ fort could repel a fair-sized army. Even the force of men required to strip the forest in a 200-foot radius around the walls was impressive. The term ‘killing ground’ takes on a threatening reality as the band exchange worried glances before their eyes are dragged back to the impossible task before them.
Rian clears his throat. “It wasn’t this big ten years ago.”
