✧
It was not the pain that awakened him but the warmth. As he blinked his eyes, the world swam into focus, and the sensation of a stony floor pressed into a bruised cheek.
You're awake.
Across the small flames, two lapis-colored eyes gated a hardened face to a body that lay strewn against the cavern's wall. Blood flowed out of the nameless knight's side like water from a stream. The fire breathing and eating its way into the oxygen, dancing across the flickering shadows of two faces equalized by pain. Otro winced and drew himself up into a sitting position, a tension found across hands tied together in the front. A golden head narrowed towards a darkened one. Blue eyes against green.
They wants to kill yous.
I know.
He thought of the boy's body below. They both did. For our eyes perceive odds and thus our hearts cannot draw confidence. Our ears detect no encouragement to keep fighting, only weakness and bickering from our worn, cowardly jaws - those that we acquired after suffering far too much death and destruction. Yes, our eyes and ears reveal how human we have become, how cold our body feels, and exactly how much colder our blood could soon be. In their gaze was the communal questioning, the reckoning of a singular why that was too complex to explain. So Otro did not ask and the Hedmark did not say. They watched the smoke cling to the ceiling and build into a darkened plume that would drift away once daylight painted the rocks a glistening blue.
✧
For some time after he would think of that moment. As he had drawn himself to his aching feet, unbound, he had seen the gentle fluttering of the crystal flakes meld into the ground. Of how in the morning, when he awoke, the cave was cool and empty. How there had been a small mound of golden blood-stained armor that crucified itself in a dry line into the frozen fluff. Each piece haphazardly arranged in a small hill; the ghastly helmet placed atop like a surrendering flag. The visor was left devoid of pupils for once.
A shattered engraved sword laid discarded; the hilt snapped jaggedly in half from the frozen steel. The snow dusted it like a consecration. The only reminder of what once was and never will be. How the nameless knight had drifted into the white and disappeared into the snow like footprints, a pool of his blood coloring the entrance rouge. The snow, peaceful for once, rolled out like a carpet of lace in the fifth dawn.
In a daze Otro had climbed down that god-forsaken mountain with his lamp, to the razzed village, back to his smoking horse in that dim ray. He unsteadily mounted the horse, clutching his hands to his body like a startled woman to a gruesome scene. Otro rode through the nights like a man on fire, the horse's body, and his morphing into a rolling of muscles.
The connection of tendon and body and blood flung into one thing, one great moving mass of life. They had crossed the quaking of avalanches, the shifting cracks open to the catacombs, and frost covered plains only to see the monastery rise from the cliffs like a sword from the misty water. Drawing back on the reins his luminous horse reared at the edge of the cliff to reveal the fractured East Landini below.
In a stupor he chained his horse in the stable, stumbled through the frigid squalls, and carved a new path through the freshly fallen snow, his body but a dot to the greater giants of the mountains. He made the treacherous climb up the craggily cliff towards the monastery, panting before pausing at the rock anchored entrance. It rose ahead of him like a gaping mouth and as his sides swirled with blood, he turned to reflect on where he came from, his bones pulsing like a newly steadied heart.
Raising a hand to his bare eyes, he squinted against the reflection of the snow; beaten, broken, and bruised. The sun glinted off the split golden sword hilt in hand, wavering with a gentle frost covering from the snow. Otro lowered his hood, the gusts that rose from the world beneath clinging to his fair locks, recognizing that he was home. That they all were connected and that in the distance, blood would no longer run like water.
✧
The office chamber smelled of incense and iron, the taste thick beneath the tongue. Thin curls of smoke rose from the braziers, whispering through the vaulted space where banners hung motionless in the cold air. Otro stood at attention before the nickle table, its surface scarred and glistening beneath the faint lamplight, his face covered in mottled bruises. Commander Alexander watched him from the far end, his burly body leaned back in the skinny chair,— a shadow of authority bound in the stiff fabric of his black surcoat. His hair was grey at the temples, the burn stretching as he worked his mouth, eyes the pale silver of a winter moon.
Consul Sanctus.
Reporting to Seven Crosses Commander Alexander.
Ya survived those ya look like you've been a dugged out of the bruised Earth itself.
The commander said at last. The words were neither surprise nor praise — only acknowledgment.
Otro inclined his head, the gray leather of his hooded cloak rustling, the cracked hilt of the golden sword resting upon the table like an offering.
The Hedmark didn't. He stayed behind. The mountain took him.
Alexander's gaze fell to the relic. His gloved fingers brushed the jagged metal, the faintest sound of steel on leather.
Then it's true. Now tell me what ya saw at the Cliffs of Landor.
Otro's heart quivered within his chest, a tremor moving down his arm as he stared at his own reflection in the scraped hilt laying on the table like an offering.
I rode to the Cliffs from the camp and the village itself had been razed to the ground. It will not be whole again for some times.
Otro told it as one unclenching a wound: the climb through the hail; the bodies splayed like discarded puppets; the head rolled away, a crown of exposed bone; the boy's eyes fixed in their last shock. He spoke of the frozen hands thrust from the snow, of the way the snow seemed to swallow the color of life until nothing remained but glass and silence. He did not spare the vulgar details—blood made into crimson ice, the rubies of red crystals on a splintered blade. He said the villagers smelled of myrrh and madness; he said one man had spat curses at him and then pointed to the cavern above, said the thing had fled there, wounded and alone.
A silence settled between them, brittle as fresh ice over the sea. Commander Alexander leaned forward from the shadows, the faint clink of his boots echoing against the stone as they tapped on the ground. Commander Alexander's jaw tightened as he too looked down at the sword piece.
We lost good men for it.
I know.
Otro's voice cracked, raw and low.
What mentioned more of the golden thing?
The words left Commander Alexander's mouth like a probing question. Otro nodded once, a quick tilt of the head in acknowledgement.
They call it a prowler, not a Rogue in the manner as we do. The man in the alley—crazy with smoke—said it wore gold like a fever. It moves like a storm and leaves the hate of men in its wake. I found the boy by the gate. He reached for something that wasn't worth the taking.
Otro's jaw twitched; he forced himself to breathe steady.
The village was not taken for coin alone. There was a rage in the way it passed—methodical, cold. It seemed to collect more than bodies. It collected the sound of life itself. The survivors say it fled into the cliff cavern. If men speak true, it climbed alone and wounded. They wanted to kill me for asking about it too.
The commander studied him, and for a brief moment the old soldier's mask faltered. Weariness leaked through the hardened lines of his face.Alexander's jaw moved; for a moment he was only a man who had once been young enough to believe in simple justice before it had all begun.
We will bury thems. Every one who can be found. We will mark the place so that those who come after remember.
Otro thought of the pile of golden blood-stained armor he had found on the mountain—an offering to a white dawn—and the nameless knight gone into the snow. He wanted to tell Alexander that there was more than hunger in that Rogue's passage, that the thing did not simply kill but erased the music from a place. But so too had the Rogue themself been in pain, been destroyed from the inside. He wanted to tell him that the villagers' hatred might one day curdle into something worse than grief. Alexander rose from the chair, his hulking weight turning to face the window creaking with frost, thick hands clasped behind his back as he spoke.
There are always those who mistake silence for weakness. You did what was asked of you. Nothing more could have been done.
The council will want options. Punitive patrols, an armed scout, a siege if more of the things were to come—
Otro cut in, blunt and aching.
Whatever took that village is not fought with banners or a hundred men in bright mail. It moves between the cracks of winter. We would lose more than we could call back.
Commander Alexander listened as men listen to weather warnings—careful, not dismissive.
Then what do ya propose, Otro? Ya rode there and returned. You saw the evidence. Speak plainly.
His gaze sought the man across from him, unyielding like a swordmaster to a squire. Otro squirmed slightly under the piercing stare, twiddling with the olive branch ring on his finger in thought. A trace of unease crossed his mind making its way down his back with a shiver. The weight his next words would carry could smit or save.
We go measured. A small party—skilled climbers and trackers, not lads who think of glory. A priest or two to hold the living and mark the dead. A simple survey of the land, of what to rebuild, of passing out rations not recieved. The village people are enraged and those that survived are little more then wisps of life.
Otro felt the weight of the boy's closed eyes behind his ribs, a private altar that would not be left unattended, that would be carried until the end of this. The commander's expression changed, softened like metal under heat, as an eyebrow raised at the mention of lack of rations.
They blame the empire. They blame the gods. They blame anything that still answers. There will be consequence either way. You know that.
Otro let his eyes drop to the table. The weight of the cave still clung to him — the firelight, the smoke, the sound of shallow breaths dying into snow. Alexander leaned forward, the lamplight sharpening the planes of his face, pressing a forehead to the cold glass before returning to face Otro. There was a long beat where the room seemed to listen to its own breathing. Alexander reached for a horn of dark wood and tapped it on the table, a small tapped echo like a summons.
Two climbers from the east guard, a tracker who knows the cliff paths, a healer, and Father Keel for rites. They'll leave at first light with no more than ten men. And Otro…
Yes?
The commander's voice lost its official hardness and took on a private weight.
Do not bring me a ghost for The Council to revile. Bring me answers, or bring me silence that is not shameful once The Council calls.
Otro bowed his head the way one does to a tomb, his straw colored head muted in the dark as the braziers flickered in the draft. Commander Alexander nodded once, his expression unreadable as Otro kept his gaze glued to the labyrinth of cobblestone.
Rest, now. The Council will want their report by dawn.
When the door closed, the fractured hilt gleaming faintly beside the dying fire of the chamber, Otro stood alone in the silence of the hallway. Outside, the wind swept across the cliffs like a sigh, a burden released. Otro lifted his gaze toward the windows, and for the briefest instant, he thought he saw a glint of gold vanish into the snow, before the blizzard swallowed up the last gleam of light. In turn, he made his way down to the barracks.
✧
Bare feet burned into the flat line of red, the heat scathing the bottoms and seeping through the thin cloths foolishly covering them. The child stumbled, their vision growing blurry as they faltered and landed on their knees. The creamy sand sunk up towards their chest and they struggled to righten their arms in the ever-shifting grains. A single-colored cloth caught itself in the child's hair, shading everything and casting their eyes into a closed glare. Each movement caused a shifting of the sands, orange fibers collected dust in the child's face and coating it like war paint. Above, two twisted birds with long amber beaks and thin feet swirled above.
Squirming, the child caught a vision of its hand, tattooed with a flaxen sun surrounded by four triangles like a compass. A thick chain attached to their wrists, binding them together. The cortex of the sun seemed to shift and move in shapes like serpents, the orange waning and expanding like a peach. Its rays did not drip down and touch the ground like honey. Instead, the sun laid down a path of wrath upon the sands that scorched the grains cerulean. The boy's coated skin appeared dusted with flecks of gold. Quickly, in attempts to obscure the vision, the sands slithered around the child like a cove of vipers. The grains mobbed to a deep black and drove itself into the mouth of the child, the sands smoothing over like antiquity. Everything above remained undisturbed.
✧
In the middle of the night, Otro awoke burning with sweat, his breath coming out in choked gasps. Moisture coated his sticky locks to his face and his body struggled within the thin bed roll to an exasperated seated position. Hunched over, a heat rose in him and looking at his hands his vision swam into a murkiness. Anxiety forced its way into his body as he whispered incoherently to himself. Clutching a hand to his chest he remained curled over like an old man with a broken body for a while. Outside, the wind screeched and swayed his cinder-colored tent angrily, bird noises resounding in his head. He felt as though the blood of the Earth had cried out. Bringing his knees to his chest, Otro rolled onto his side and pressed his face into his thighs. For once, tears streamed freely down his face for himself.