The Middle of Nowhere

Before in Nowhere

Everyone comes from somewhere, the Elder used to say. Kender have a home, even if they leave it once and never return from their wanderings. Soldiers and priests, merchants and monsters, all have points of origin. A patch of ground, the shade of a tree, a pattern of stars overhead are all parts of home.

The village of Nowhere was just that: isolated, unknown and unremarked. A scholar could have pointed out the larger locale on a map, but no map bore the name of Nowhere. Unlike some hamlets kept secret and safe by high mountains or steaming swamps, Nowhere was nowhere simply because it was out of the way, a small spot in a large expanse. Riches and resources they had none. The terrain was nondescript grassland, amidst low hills crowned with stands of willow and alder. Too scrawny for lumber and too gnarled for spears or tool shafts, even the trees of Nowhere were of little use.

Despite the forgotten nature of the place, people did live there. A village had grown up around the only clear spring for two days’ ride in any direction. Gray-bearded villagers called it the Eternal Spring, for in all the unbroken history of their lives, it had never run dry.

Simple huts of wattle slathered with mud daub surrounded the spring in a horseshoe plan, the open end of the shoe facing west, where the villagers kept fields planted in onions, carrots, barley, and cabbage. Constant labor was required to make anything grow. The climate was dry, and some seasons the only thing that kept the crops alive was the ever-flowing spring.

It was late summer, and the harvest was four weeks away. A minor drought had plagued the region since high summer. The usual towering thunderstorms had all passed south of Nowhere, leaving the yellow soil dry as flour. When the wind huffed down from the north, it brought with it a cloud of dust that covered everything in a drab and desiccated ochre grit.

Parched through and through from his morning’s labors, Malek sought the old well. Sweat stung his eyes as he hauled up the bucket from the depths. The worn wooden pulley rattled and squeaked as the brimming bucket rose. Malek was pleased to see clear water sloshing as the container swayed upward. No matter how erratic the rains might be, the village could always rely on the ancient well.

Malek gathered in the bucket. He splashed a handful of water on the Ancestor’s head, a token of appreciation of the well’s steadfast bounty. The Ancestor was an upright lump of sandstone, as tall as his waist and red as the sunset, inset in the rubblestone wall around the well. Totally unlike the nondescript gray rocks found around Nowhere, the Ancestor had been brought to the village from some far-off place so long ago its exact point of origin was forgotten. In time it had become the totem of the village. Old folks in Nowhere believed it housed the spirits of every man, woman, and child who’d ever lived in the village, hence the epithet, “Ancestor.” Hearth tales told on long winter nights held the Ancestor was guardian of the Eternal Spring, with ancient and recondite powers.

Looking at the bucket, Malek frowned. The wooden sides were slick with slime. Someone was not doing their job. Every family in the village took turns caring for common property like the well. In summer, the bucket had to be scraped every few days to keep the slime off. It had been so neglected green moss was beginning to grow on the bottom. Malek poured the rest of the brimming bucket into a tall waterskin and tried to remember who had care of the well this month. Willat’s family? Old widow Naek? Or was it Bakar? It must be Bakar. He was known to be careless, and besides, he was unmarried and couldn’t slough the job onto a wife or child.

“How goes it, Malek?”

Bakar sauntered up, a sprig of barley in his teeth. The stem was yellow-green and thin like the crop in the fields.

“It goes dry,” Malek replied with a grunt. When Bakar looked alarmed, Malek quickly explained, “The weather, I mean. The well flows.”

Four times Malek dropped and retrieved the bucket. He hefted the now full skin onto his shoulder. Destined for his carrot patch, it held four buckets full, a heavy load. Even Malek’s sturdy knees bowed a bit under the burden. He passed his neighbor the slimy bucket without a word.

He looked out over the parchwork of gardens. It was midday, and everyone able-bodied was in the fields. Only crippled old folk and the smallest children remained in the village during the day. They kept inside, out of the sun. Nothing was stirring, not even the wind. Malek’s eyes narrowed.

“What’s that?” he said, puzzled.

Bakar dropped the bucket down the deep shaft. Before it hit the water he replied, “What’s what?”

“That dust.”

Bakar turned languidly to see what puzzled his neighbor. Though a young man, he moved more slowly than anyone else in the village, save the Elder himself.

Shading his eyes, Bakar perused the narrow column of yellow dust rising southeast of the village.

“Wind,” said Bakar, unimpressed.

“Wind’s out of the north,” Malek replied. “That dust is coming towards us, against the wind.”

As soon as he said it, both knew someone was coming. As no one ever came to Nowhere casually, visitors meant trouble.

“Sound the gong!” Malek said. “I’ll go to the fields!”

Bakar loped away, almost moving quickly. On a post between the last pair of houses in the village hung a slab of bronze, green with age. As Malek sprinted past, the phlegmatic farmer picked up the wooden mallet leaning against the post and started whacking the gong. The battered metal plate rang surprisingly clearly, and the sound carried far across the open land. By the time Malek reached the edge of the communal barley field, men and women were already gathering.

His elder brother Nils was there with his sixteen-year-old son Larem, the Elder’s daughter Caeta (herself the oldest woman in Nowhere), the tow-headed twins Lak and Wilf, and the other adults of the village.

“Why the alarm?” demanded Caeta. Malek, out of breath, simply pointed at the column of dust, now much closer than when he first spotted it. Grim-faced, Caeta shouldered her hoe and said, “Back to your homes, everyone!”

The fields rapidly emptied of farmers, each clutching whatever tool they happened to have-rakes, hoes, dibbles. Everyone converged on the clanging gong. Trailing the crowd, Malek took the opportunity to look for Laila, his bride-to-be. He spied her in the door of her family’s hut, her blind father leaning on her strong, brown arm.

The farmers collected around the bronze gong, which Bakar continued to beat until Sohn the brewer snatched the mallet from his hand. Joined by a throng of old folks and children, the villagers milled about in noisy confusion, everyone talking and no one listening.

Malek skirted the chaotic scene and hurried along the row of houses to Laila’s hut. Side by side, the resemblance between father and daughter was strong. They had the same sharp chin and straight nose, and identical brown eyes. Old Marren’s hair had once been honey-brown, like Laila’s. There the resemblance ended. Laila was tall, straight, and strong. The same wasting disease that had stolen Marren’s sight had shrunk his formerly powerful frame and turned his wispy hair white.

“It’s Malek,” Laila said for her father’s benefit. “What’s happening?”

“No one knows yet, but something’s coming-”

A piercing scream filled the air. All eyes turned toward the sound, which came from the cluster of gray-haired women gathered by their houses on the south side of the village. Trotting through the hot afternoon sun came a line of horsemen. The tired animals’ tongues were lolling and thickly coated with dust. Riding the thirsty beasts were figures in bizarre patchwork armor: bits of iron or bronze, mail or plate, wired and tied over thickly padded suits of leather. Cuisses, helmets, and schildrons were scuplted into hideous faces, skulls, and horned monsters. War and the elements gave these hideously mismatched suits a rusty patina that resembled splashes of dried blood.

Rider after rider emerged from the swirling grit stirred up by their horses’ hooves, thirty-two horsemen in all. Armed with long lances, they halted just outside the ring of village huts. Visors on their helmets were shut, lending the intruders a faceless, menacing air. It must be stifling for the men inside-if men they were.

The unknown riders were frightening enough, but on their heels came a more terrifying sight. Striding into view came a squad of towering ogres, each almost as tall as the mounted warriors ahead of them. Yellow tusks, filed sharp as daggers, protruded from the ogres’ underslung jaws. Their ears were pulled down to their shoulders by heavy ornaments of brass and bone, and their nobby gray hands were smeared with dried gore. The tallest of the monsters had blue-black tattoos on their shaven pates, and dry white skulls of various victims, two-legged and four-legged, hung from loops on their tarnished armor.

The screaming became general as the villagers shrank from the monstrous new interlopers. Many threw down their tools and huddled around the old gong post.

“Ogres,” Old Marren said grimly. His grip tightened on Laila’s arm.

“How did you know?” she asked.

“I can smell them.”

No ogres had been to the village in living memory, and Malek wondered where the old man had encountered such monsters before. He let the question go unasked, muttering instead to Marren, “Do you still have that sword?”

The old man’s sightless eyes gazed into the air over Malek’s head. “I do. Over the fireplace.”

“I’ll get it.”

“Malek, no!” Laila hissed.

“Go quickly, son!” countered the blind man.

Malek dashed inside. Marren’s sword was old, nicked and pitted, but he kept it well honed and oiled. Malek took it down. It felt like stone, long and heavy. He had never held a sword in his life.

Outside, the ogres ignored the cringing farmers and set about slaking their thirst at the well. Bucket after bucket of water went down the ogres’ long gullets, spilling out their jutting jaws and dripping from their ivory fangs. When one ogre didn’t pass the bucket fast enough, his comrades buffeted him around the head with their massive clawed hands. Slipping in the mud, the tardy ogre fell heavily against the stone wall surrounding the well. His companions hooted.

Malek counted ten ogres, each armed with a long-handled axe; burnished, well-dented bronze shields; and banded-iron armor criss-crossing their chests.

Six more horses entered the village behind the ogres. Taller and finer-bred than those the lancers rode, they bore riders in blackened three-quarter plate, much stained from long days in the saddle. One rider bore a standard pole with a short, forked oriflamme of sun-faded scarlet. When the six appeared, the lancers straightened in their saddles and the ogres ceased their frantic guzzling and sorted themselves into a semblance of a line.

The riders drew up between the well and the gong. In the center of the group, a tall horseman in streaked sable plate raised his visor and looked over the frightened farmers. Malek made out a short, wide nose and beetling brows, but the rider was undeniably human.

“Where is your headman?” he demanded.

When no dared respond, the man in black armor nodded, and the warrior beside him produced a crossbow. Knocking a thick quarrel, the bowman pointed his weapon at the crowd and loosed. To Malek’s horror, Sohn the brewer collapsed, his chest pierced through.

More screaming and weeping erupted as the crowd of villagers surged away. The lancers quickly encircled them, herding the terrified farmers back to the gong. Two of the younger men tried to break free and run. Neither made it more than ten steps before they were spitted on rusty lances. Each new outpouring of blood brought fresh screams from the frightened farmers and restless growls and grunts from the ogres.

Malek had enough. He charged at the rider with the raised visor, waving Marren’s old sword. He would have died for his temerity had not the invaders’ leader stayed his archer’s hand. Six steps from the horsemen, an ogre stuck out the handle of his axe and tripped Malek. The sword went flying, and Malek’s charge ended facedown in the fresh mud.

“One of you has courage, if not brains,” said the leader. The ogre who tripped Malek drove his bare foot into the villager’s ribs. Shod or not, it felt like a plowshare. Malek rolled over and over from the blow. Fire and pain flashed through his side.

“Get up.”

When it was clear Malek could not oblige, the leader ordered one of his ogres to get the farmer. The enormous creature, spattered with mud and smelling as if he’d rolled in the rotting carcass of a dead cow, seized Malek by the wrist and dragged him before his commander.

“Who are you?”

“Malek, Gusrav’s son,” he gasped.

“What place is this?”

“Nowhere …”

The ogre slapped Malek on the back of the head. A mild reproof by ogre standards, it rattled the teeth in Malek’s jaw.

“I ask you again, what place is this?” barked the commander.

“The village of Nowhere!”

At his leader’s nod, the ogre dropped him. Through tear-filled eyes, Malek watched as the invader unbuckled the chin strap of his helmet and pried the heavy headgear off. Under the sinister black helmet was a surprisingly benign countenance. Of middle age, his heavy brows and flat nose, combined with high cheekbones and deeply tanned skin, lent him an aura of refinement unusual for a bandit chief.

“I am Rakell,” he declaimed loudly. “Lord Rakell. I have come to this province to bring law and order to backwaters such as this. From this moment on, I am master here. My word is your only law. Obey me, and all will be well. None shall be spared who defy my will. Is that clear?”

There was no response other than quiet weeping. Rakell ignored the muted lamentations.

“At my invitation, dwarves of the Throtian Mining Guild have established an iron mine sixteen leagues from here in the northwestern buttes of the Khalkist Mountains.” Sensing geography meant little to his listeners, Rakell gave up further description. “They need able-bodied people to work the diggings. This village will provide twenty for the mine today and in thirty days’ time, another twenty.”

“There are only sixty-six adults here,” protested one farmer weakly. “Take away forty and there won’t be enough hands to harvest or plant!”

Rakell raised his hand, and three ogres waded into the crowd and dragged out the man who dared protest. While Rakell looked on impassively, they beat the poor farmer senseless with their enormous knotty fists. When blood started to flow, the bandit chief called off his thugs.

“That’s enough. Cripples and corpses can do little work.”

The ogres desisted. To the villagers the self-proclaimed lord of Nowhere added, “Perhaps your dialect is as backward as your wits. When I speak, it is a command, not a request!”

When the villagers persisted in clinging together in defiance of Rakell’s orders, the lancers moved in, using their spears to lever men and women from the weeping throng. They cut out the first twenty they came to, ranging from Nil’s teenage son to Bakar’s stout aunt Yena. Torn from friends and family, the chosen villagers were shoved into line by the ogres and shackled together.

Malek managed to roll onto one knee. Catching Rakell’s eye, the bandit-lord called for Malek’s lost sword. An ogre complied, presenting the weapon to his commander pommel-first.

Rakell took the sword. Upon examining it, his thick brows arched up in surprise.

“How did a knightly blade get to this dustheap, I wonder?” To Malek he said, “You, farmer. Where did you get this blade?”

“My plow turned it up in the barley field,” he lied.

Rakell swung the blade experimentally, testing its balance and heft. “Interesting. Pre-Cataclysm work, watered steel made by the school of Thelgaard … I shall keep this.” He slid the old sword through his buff leather baldric.

Marren’s sword! How dare he make off with it! Malek attempted to stand, but pain shot through his ribs and brought him up short. Gasping, he dropped back on his hands. Rakell’s companions laughed.

“Heal up, firebrand!” Rakell said, chuckling. “Next time will be your turn. I’d take you now, but the work is hard enough with healthy ribs!”

Rakell’s lieutenants ordered the huts searched. Lancers and ogres scattered, kicking down doors and dragging out women and children who’d hidden inside. Behind Caeta’s hut they found her cow. A lancer looped a halter around the beast’s horns and led her away. When her shaggy calf tried to follow, bawling, another lancer speared it. The sight and smell of blood inflamed the ogres beyond reason. Whooping, they fell on the still-living calf and tore it apart with their hands. Aghast, villagers watched in horror as the ogres happily ate the raw, bloody flesh with all-too-evident joy.

The human raiders filled waterskins and bottles from the well. One young warrior fetched his commander a cool drink. Rakell raised the skin to his lips, squinting against the late-day sun. The water had just begun to flow when Rakell stopped swallowing. Water coursed over his black-bearded chin.

“Mother of scorpions! Can it be?” he breathed. “Are there ghosts in this wasteland too?”

“My lord?” said the young man who’d given his water to Rakell.

The commander tossed the bottle to his aide and spurred his horse forward. At a slow walk, he approached the two figures standing before a rude and humble hut.

“It is you!” Rakell said. “Marren uth Aegar!”

The blind man lifted his chin. “No one has called me that for nine and twenty years,” he said. “Who speaks that forgotten name?”

“I served under you as a lad, forty years ago,” said Rakell. “I fought my first battle in the vale of Garnet at your side.”

“Who are you?” said Laila sharply.

“Another ghost.” Rakell unbuckled the gorget around his neck, revealing the base of his throat. A great livid scar stretched from under one ear all the way around to the other. Laila cried out, unable to believe anyone could survive such a wound.

“What is it, girl?” said her father.

“His throat was cut, and yet he lives!” she said, choking.

Marren breathed a single word. It might have been a name, but no one near, not even Laila, could make it out.

Rakell replaced the gorget. “It’s a day for resurrections, girl, if Marren uth Aegar lives too.”

To his aides he said, “These two shall come with me. Take them!”

“No!” Laila bloodied her knuckles punching a visored warrior, but it was all for naught. Her hands were pinioned, but she continued to struggle and kick. Not until a noose was hung over her father’s unbowed neck did she relent.

“Leave him be!” she cried.

“He can be led or be dragged,” Rakell retorted. “I can set one of my ogres to the task, or you may do it-if you behave yourself!”

Pale but furious, Laila agreed. The noose was taken off.

The lancers and ogres, with twenty enslaved villagers between them, started off at a slow shuffle, their backs to the setting sun. When Malek saw Laila and her father walking in the midst of Rakell and his lieutenants, he found the strength to stand and shout her name.

Heads turned all around. Rakell reined up, waiting to see what Malek might do. Unarmed, unskilled, the young farmer stood, trembling with rage.

“Ride on,” Rakell said calmly. With his first step, his horse put a hoof through the village’s well bucket, crushing it.

Lancers and ogres rampaged through the village huts, taking what trifles caught their eye. They despoiled far more than they stole. The worst loss occurred when two ogres found Wilf’s pigs. With deep grunts of satisfaction, the towering monsters waded into the pen, grabbing the young farmer’s fat porkers by the hindquarters. Tucking a shrilly squealing animal under each noisome arm, the ogres followed their leader out of the village.

No one moved until the raiders were just a column of dust rising from the hills again. Malek shook his fist at the drifting ochre pall.

Someone touched his shoulder. Malek spun, fists ready. It was his brother Nils.

“They took Larem!” he said. Malek saw something in his placid brother’s eyes he’d never seen there before: total outrage. “He’s only sixteen!”

“I know.” Malek put a hand on Nils’s shoulder and coughed when the dust cloud swept over them. Every gasp felt like a knife in his ribs. Muddy streaks appeared on his face. “We must go after them!”

“Wait!” Caeta held Malek back. “You can’t go. They’ll kill you!”

He tore free from her grasp and stamped his feet in helpless fury. “Laila! They took Laila!”

“The Elder,” said Nils, casting eyes at the windmill, sited on a low rise outside the village. There amidst the cogs and grindstones lived Nowhere’s eldest resident. “Let’s ask Calec. He’ll know what to do!”

Old folks and children were sent back to their huts as the villagers swarmed up the hill to the mill. The airs were light, so the four vanes of the windmill quivered in place but did not turn. Without bothering to knock, Malek burst in. The others crowded in behind him.

“Aged One! Terrible news!” Malek said.

Calec raised his head from the knob of his walking stick. “I know. I saw.”

No one questioned his claim. The old man couldn’t see ten steps ahead, and he was nearly deaf, too. Only a deaf man could stand to live in the mill when the works were clattering. Nonetheless, for many years they’d all known the Elder could see and hear things an ordinary man could not.

“What shall we do, Papa?” asked Caeta.

“Do about what?”

“The bandits!” Malek ground his teeth. “They took our people to slave in some mine!”

The Elder’s toothless jaw worked. “Take ’em back!”

Malek and the others who’d lost people today roundly cheered the old man’s pronouncement, but Caeta said, “How can we? Those men are warriors. What about the ogres? How can we fight them?

“Then do nothing!” said the Elder testily. He lowered his chin to his stick and let his sunken eyes close.

“I’m going to try!” Malek declared. “Who’s with me?”

Some were, and some weren’t. It disgusted Malek that not all his fellow villagers would rally around him.

“Calves to the slaughter,” Calec muttered. “Go now, and die.”

Mentioning calves reminded everyone of the fate of Caeta’s unfortunate beast. The memory of the ogre tusks biting out mouthfuls of still-living flesh was all too vivid.

Seeing the increasing number of downcast faces, Malek exclaimed, “Are we beaten, then? Do we give up our loved ones without a fight?”

“We’re not warriors,” Bakar said dolefully.

Malek felt as though the dirt floor of the mill was crumbling beneath his feet. “I’ll go alone, if I have to!” he declared. He was almost out the door when Calec said, “Wait!”

Malek paused. “Speak your piece, old man, and be done with it.”

A thousand fine wrinkles appeared when the Elder screwed his ancient face into a grimace. “Would you plow a barley field with a dibble?”

“Of course not!” A dibble was a simple hand tool, useful only in small gardens.

“But you’ll fight an outlaw band alone-with your bare hands?”

“If I must,” Malek replied stiffly.

“You need a plow to cultivate a field,” said the Elder, wheezing a little as he shifted on his haunches. “For this great task, you need warriors to fight warriors.”

“What are you saying, Papa?” asked Caeta.

“Set a wolf to eat a wolf! The world is full of spillers of blood and wielders of iron. They afflict the land as fleas torment a dog! Go and find some to fight your battle for you. Let their blood be shed, not ours!”

Everyone began babbling at once, debating the old man’s notion. Nils spoke for the nay-sayers when he asked, “How will we pay warriors? They’ll want steel or gold. We have nothing!”

“The granaries are full,” replied Malek. “Despite the drought, the harvest will be fair. We can pay in grain.”

“No mercenary will fight for barley!” scoffed Bakar.

“Some may for a full belly,” countered the Elder. “Find the hungriest, and make them your champions.”

After long wrangling, the farmers finally agreed. Four villagers would go forth from Nowhere to seek out warriors for hire. Malek wanted to go, and his brother Nils also volunteered. Daunted by the prospect of leaving their familiar land, no one else was quite so eager to join the expedition. Impulsively, Wilf offered to go. His twin brother Lak had been one of those taken by Rakell. Lastly Caeta announced she would go too. Someone older and more level-headed needed to go along to keep the hotheaded Malek out of trouble.

“Where should we go?” asked Wilf, scratching his rough thatch of straw-colored hair.

No one knew. None of them had ever been more than a day’s walk from Nowhere in their lives.

“Go west,” growled the Elder at last. “Follow the setting sun. That way lies the path of blood.”

Malek clasped hands with his fellow travelers. “We’ll be back in less than thirty days,” he vowed.

They hastily packed a few supplies for the journey and departed before sundown. As they passed the well, Wilf noticed something strange. The Ancestor bore a large horizontal crack.

Caeta and the rest paused to examine the old stone. The sandstone pillar was broken right across.

“Must’ve happened when the ogre fell against it,” said Nils.

“A bad sign,” Caeta murmured, running worn and callused fingers over the break.

“Will the well dry up?” Wilf wondered.

Malek resumed walking. He was forty steps away before he turned back to call, “Leave that broken stone before your courage dries up!”

One by one his companions rose from the wall and joined him. Last to leave was Caeta. By the dying light of day she could see a dark stain spreading from the crack in the red stone. It spread very slowly, but when she touched the stain, her fingers were not colored or damp. The stain spreading from the broken stone did not leave a trace.