The Pilgrims

25

Eric drifted in and out of sleep, his dreams full of Siel or a woman just like her, running about him fast and ethereal as a ghost, her bright echoing laugh all around him. She was laughing at some private joke at his expense, then fled as a great shadow stretched out before him, while the old-young lord towered behind.

Twice in the night, some of the camp woke to the distant sound of chain mail clinking and heavy boots stomping past in a fast march. Now and then Eric woke and wondered dazedly where the hell he was. Silhouettes of the sleeping band were comforting around him, strangers or not. He remembered being a boy on camp with the Cub Scouts, learning knots, fistfights: memories from a world ago, a world away, suddenly hardly seeming real. That whole time, this place had been here, its own travails and problems just as serious as those of the world next to it. How long had this world really called to him? No memory he could find gave any hint that he would one day spend a night under a completely different sky.

Case slept next to him, but Eric didn’t stir when the old guy got up to empty his bladder. It was still dark, though the night was old. Some way closer to the road was the silhouette of whoever kept watch — one of the women, it appeared. Mindful of the crack of twigs underfoot, hugely loud as they seemed in this gloom, Case went as far to the edge of the group as he dared. Then a glimpse of green caught his eye between trees further into the scrub. Her.

His heart raced, though not with fear. ‘Miss?’ he whispered. ‘Stranger?’

There wasn’t an answer, and he strained his eyes into the darkness ahead. She hadn’t been far away. Then something ripped the air nearby, whoosh! Thock! An arrow striking a tree trunk. Siel was just behind him, her bow in hand, another arrow already nocked and drawn, its string creaking. ‘Go back,’ she said.

‘You shot at her?’ whispered Case, outraged. ‘You shot at my friend?’

‘Your friend should introduce herself. By day.’

‘She introduced herself to me.’

Siel’s mouth hung open and she stared at him, amazed to be chastising someone old enough to be her grandfather. ‘You are not an honoured guest here! You are a newborn again. There’s much to learn. Go back to sleep. Don’t wake the others.’

Case was equally amazed to be chastised by someone young enough to be his granddaughter, so fiercely at that. He was lost for words, so he spluttered for a moment then did what she said.

They had buried the fires’ remains well before the sun began to rise. Except of course there was no sun. The sky lit itself slowly and evenly, the eastern part no brighter than the rest.

Now they walked deeper into a forest with a floor of brittle grass, the thin light showing no more than a few metres ahead. Undergrowth crunched beneath their boots.

Anfen’s mood was far brighter than it had been the night before, and at their first rest break it became clear why: he was about to part company with Kiown. He called the group together. ‘We separate here. Sharfy, Loup, Siel, the Pilgrims, myself. The rest of you stay with our contacts by the Godstears Sea until you’re sent for. Enjoy the fish, don’t be noticed. Doon, we are visiting your aunt; I will send your greetings. But you need to be with this group to protect them. Kiown knows the roads best, and for that reason he leads you, wisely I hope. Be well.’

The group departed, though it was clear most of them weren’t pleased with the orders. ‘Watch out for magpies,’ Kiown called to Anfen, referring to the Invia. ‘I won’t be here to save you next time.’ Anfen did not indicate he’d heard. Kiown turned to Eric. ‘You! I will make you a good deal for that scale. Don’t crush it up for visions. And be careful of Sharfy. Among his collection of dirty secrets is a … shall we say fondness for scale visions. Can’t help himself, you wait and see.’ He leaned close and lowered his voice. ‘I see how you look at her. I see how you look at me now. You don’t approve of my sleeping arrangements last night. Probably you plain don’t like me at all. I understand! But it went no further than sharing a blanket. Never bedded her proper and never would. Be careful, you smitten thing. She’s a killer. Don’t be fooled by her age.’

Eric frowned. ‘Her age … wait a second, how old is she?’

‘Fourteen. Thanks for the “tie”. Be safe!’

As those remaining prepared to leave, Loup took Anfen aside and they had a long, quiet chat. After it, Anfen seemed very pleased. He clapped Case on the shoulder. ‘Loup has uncovered some of your charm’s secrets! You, my friend, have collected a mine full of treasures. This could be a pivotal moment in history. Well done.’ But he said no more about it, and the group resumed their march through the trees in waxing light.

‘Glad he’s happy,’ Case muttered.

Eric was still on the brink of throwing up, in a dizzy, reeling world of remorse. He snapped, ‘What’s wrong with you?’

‘I don’t trust these people, Eric. What I saw at the castle was pretty bad, but I haven’t seen anything from this lot yet to convince me they’re the good guys.’

‘Good guys? Case, is this a movie or are we trying to survive here?’

‘I don’t know, but the only ones here who showed me any goodness at all was Stranger and that wings woman, whatever they call em.’

‘Didn’t the Invia put you in harm’s way? She put you inside the castle and made you see all those bad things.’

‘She had her reasons.’

‘Oh, come on.’

‘She also gave me that necklace and saved me from falling down a cliff. You should see em up close, Eric. They’re beautiful. And last night, that Stranger lass, she came to visit, just beyond the camp there. Well, that woman who never smiles or talks shot an arrow at her.’

‘Not woman, Case. Girl.’

‘No warnings, nothing, just whoosh! They tried to kill Stranger, Eric, after she helped me out and all, sent me back here to you.’

‘They don’t know who she is yet. Did you hear them? They were nervous because she can do serious magic. Why doesn’t she come and introduce herself?’

‘Maybe she tried last night. And by the way, are they keeping us captive or do they plan to let us go if we find a town or something?’

Eric felt reluctant to admit it in Case’s present mood, and he wondered how much the old guy was just in need of a drink. Yet … ‘We are … I think not quite captives, but not quite free, either.’

‘There!’ said Case, triumphant. ‘I want out of here, Eric. I want my charm back and I want to go.’

Eric laughed. ‘Case! Where are you going to go? You don’t have a map, don’t know anything about this place.’

‘I don’t care. I had a long enough innings already. If something gets me, well and good. I’m done with this shady bunch. They never tell us outright who they are or what they’re doing. You stay with em and keep the gun. Just don’t tell them what I’m doing.’

‘Maybe I should, before you get yourself killed.’

‘Oh no you don’t. I get myself killed that’s my business, I don’t give a shit. You got years ahead of you, I got weeks or days, I’ll spend em how I want. Wouldn’t be here at all’ — Case bit off the words which Eric thought were likely to be: if you hadn’t jumped through the door like a lemming off a cliff.

‘Case, I would dearly love this conversation to be over, because I have hard work to do glossing over something I feel extremely guilty about. But let me ask you something. And don’t get mad, OK? This Stranger woman. Did she really come last night just to see you? Do you think she’s going to follow you around and keep you safe, if you leave the group?’ And maybe conjure you another drink or two? And, maybe in your heart of hearts, give you a little kiss …?

That touched a nerve, perhaps what he hadn’t said as much as what he had. Case stormed away from him, not before turning and whispering fiercely, ‘I tell you what, I’m gonna wait for my chance. And don’t you tell them. You owe me that much.’

‘I guess if you don’t measure what’s owed or not in a material way, you’re right,’ said Eric, thinking of the money he’d spent on this geezer’s alcohol alone.

Case frowned. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Nothing, forget it. OK, Case. You got it. My lips are zipped.’

It was several hours before Eric discovered Kiown had been joking about Siel’s age. She was really nineteen. When Sharfy told him this, he suddenly shared every violent wish Anfen may or may not have had for the lanky redhead, although the relief he felt was like a gift from the heavens.

Meanwhile the ground bore no path for them across its sloping turf; the bush was thick in parts, then thinning away to bare fields of stiff grass; and the trees were mainly kinds not dissimilar to pine and eucalyptus, some hugely tall with thick, strong branches, others skeletally thin. There was small game to hunt: creatures that seemed cousins of deer and rabbit. They were easily caught, full of good meat, and seemed to live for little purpose other than to feed travellers. Eric tried to think of what bothered him on sight of the creatures, why they seemed less real than they should. He thought, sketched by a different nature. Each looks pretty much the same as every other of its kind. But it’s not like that with people, or with the animals you see of our world, like crows and horses …

As days and nights of marching took them deeper into the woods, mist which never lifted covered the ground in a white shroud. It was so thick in parts that they lost sight of each other, and the march became a blind stagger with arms extended to stop head-on collisions with trees. There was no sign yet of the ghosts Sharfy had feared, unless the peculiar echoing calls of birds they never saw, seeming to report their progress, came from the throats of ghosts.

Occasional clearings held the corpses of old villages: longneglected huts of log and stone. They stopped to explore these, finding in them no recent signs of life, human or animal — just abandoned stone water wells and the trees keeping silent vigil. Their feet began kicking up old bones in the undergrowth. Eric overheard Sharfy and Anfen quietly talking of massacres, mass executions of soldiers marched here in lines from trapped or surrendering armies, their bodies left in shallow ditches and the woods left full of angry spirits.

They bathed in cold clear streams when they found them, without time for modesty or embarrassment if the mist was thin. Eric soon found that Sharfy had just as many scars on his hairy backside as on his face and arms, and deep crisscrossing grooves on his back which could only be from distant lashings. Siel meanwhile did not much speak to him or anyone else, only to say necessary things. She had distanced herself on purpose and he didn’t know why. Again and again he thought back to the hilltop, and always he saw her head turning away from him, denying her mouth to him, then passively giving it with her eyes looking sideways into the distance as though at nothing, as though waiting for him to hurry and finish what she had willingly started. Like he had caught her and thrown her down instead. Did you? he wondered. If she thought you were a prince, was it not a lie that got her to offer herself? How is that different? As the days of travel went on, and they got further and further from the world he knew, a desire grew in him to do that very thing, right and wrong aside: throw her down and have her.

In the nights they spent in those lonely silent parts, white orbs glinted on the edges of their sight, seeming to press in, bringing with them a biting chill. A wind they couldn’t feel whispered and rustled through the grass and bushes with faintly heard sighs of pain and weeping. But when they turned to look closer, the lights fled their vision, staying always at the edges of it.

‘Silly old ghosts!’ Loup cried one night, when the lights sat at the edge of their small hilltop clearing and no longer fled, bathing the whole campsite in eerie flickering white. ‘Go on, leave us a while. You and your whines and moans, trying to give us nightmares. Here! Come with me, come tell me all about it, get it done with. Yes, yes, you’ve got your troubles, so do the living, curse it, so do we …’ He marched grumbling off into the trees, the glimmering lights following him. He was out of sight for a long while, but when he returned, the lights didn’t come with him. ‘Ignore em,’ he said with a yawn, as though they were no more than loud neighbours. ‘They make the air cold — so what? They’re no harm, just seeing who we are and why our feet make such a noise through their scrub, whether we mean harm to kick their bones with our steps or no. They’d need lessons from foul dead-meddling spells before they could make real trouble, oh aye. These poor sad ones don’t know how.’

Siel for some reason was not so easily assured; she moaned and whimpered in her sleep. Eric suddenly had to fight no lust, only a desire to stroke her hair and tell her she’d be all right.

Loup saw him watching her and whispered: ‘She can see what happened here, back in the day, that’s all.’ Seeing his surprise: ‘Oh, aye. Got a little Talent, she does. Can’t control it or help it, of course. But bad things happened here at this very spot, very bad things. She can hear em, loud as if they’re going on this very moment, just over yonder. Kept it hidden, she has, brave thing, but it’s harder tonight. This is a bad place. Men of honour died here in a way they never deserved, lots of em at that. She hears it.’

In the night’s quiet, with just the faintest of breezes whispering through the branches, Eric lay back and imagined he could hear the sounds too: horrible screams of pain from the strangers whose bones littered the undergrowth, whose torment would never really end, but was in some little pocket of time forever locked away, their screams still trailing on and ricocheting faintly off the tree trunks, which stood as indifferent to all this then as they did now.