Chapter Twenty-Two: The Burning Village

“Little separates a bandit from a cannibal. In my eyes, they are the same.”

—Reuben Cowl, Ranger of the Freemen

“Fire,” said Talberon. “Up ahead.”

Alend looked up and rubbed his eyes. They were dry and prickly from lack of sleep, his eyelids as heavy as lead. The sky was grey on the horizon—not the grey of a storm but the angry, billowing grey-black of smoke. He could smell it too, sharp and pungent against the scent of sleet and snow.

“It can’t be,” he murmured, gripping his reins as he sat to attention. “It’s been raining ever since we left the valley, and snowing before then. How in Hellheim could there be a fire?”

“A ransacked settlement, perhaps,” Talberon said.

“Last I checked, the nearest village to the Sleeping Twins was halfway to Caerlon.”

“That would have been long ago. Things have changed since then.” Talberon withdrew the sparrow-locked book from his robes and opened it to a page with a map on it. He drove his horse alongside Alend and tilted it towards him, pointing to a small dot where the line representing the Brackenburg left the entrance to the Sleeping Twins. Felhaven wasn’t on the map, and nor were several other places Alend remembered from his days as a Kingsblade, but there were about a dozen more farms and villages scattered about that hadn’t been there sixteen years ago. The settlement Talberon was pointing to was a small village by the name of Adeir.

“A ransacked village,” muttered Alend. He frowned as an image of a burning Felhaven surfaced. “Relicts? Worgals?”

“Possible, but I doubt it.” Talberon tugged at the wisps of his beard, thinking. “Despite what you’d think, most relict sightings have been around or close to the Capitol. Only those under the command of Al'Ashar himself would have reason to venture this far. I’d put my money on bandits or the like, though the only way we’d find out for sure is if we checked.”

They came to a fork in the road. One path continued straight ahead while the other wound up the side of a small hill. Talberon took them up the second one.

“Why are we going this way?” Alend asked. “Aren’t we checking on Adeir?”

“If we had enough time to stop by every village that needed our help, Aedrasil would be dead and gone before we reached her. We simply don’t have the time, Deserter.”

“You can’t be serious. We’re just going to leave them to die? We could take on the enemy easily, just the two of us, whether it’s relicts or bandits or—”

Talberon swivelled in his saddle and scowled. Creases formed across his brow like gathering storm-clouds. “Have you forgotten your condition so soon?”

Alend glowered but held his tongue. His stomach had stopped bleeding, but it still reminded him that he was wounded with a dull pang every few miles of travel. He was in no condition to fight—especially not against several people at once.

“It’ll be faster if we cut straight through,” he said, though he already knew what the response would be.

“I’d rather lose a day and get there in one piece than take a risk and lose three.”

Alend couldn’t argue with that. Had their positions been reversed, he would have said the same.

The decision was made. The fork disappeared from view behind them, and soon they were rushing up the hill as fast as they could without the horses tripping over the rocks and roots. It had been almost a day since they’d left the Sleeping Twins, passing the bridge just before the storm had reached its worst. It was behind them now, just a swathe of grey in the distant sky, and the familiar fields of motley green and yellow and patches of white had returned. The Faengard Alend had left behind had been a lush land of trees and grass, of wildflowers blooming by the roadsides and sparkling waterholes where critters and all manner of wild beasts congregated. The Faengard Alend saw now was a Faengard ravaged by unrest and strife, a Faengard stripped bare of its beauty. It was shocking, even if Alend had already seen its effects in the Sleeping Twins.

“It’s not all like this,” Talberon said, as if reading Alend’s mind. “There are some parts of the world that the Winter has been kind to, even a few places that remain untouched. It’s worst in the north and the west, though the north has always been cold.”

“I imagine they’d still be affected,” Alend muttered. “The world probably relies on them for food and supplies now. That’s a lot of pressure, even for a large city.”

“True, that. It’s good to see the years haven’t dulled your knowledge and rhetoric.”

Alend ignored the remark and focused on the rhythm of the horse, loosening his muscles and allowing his body to move naturally. The soreness of his thighs had already disappeared, and like an old man awakening from a dream, his body was beginning to remember. Riding, fighting on horseback, navigating the wilderness, all the skills that he’d allowed to rust, they were coming back. The rust was crumbling, giving way to the polished silver beneath. Ein had struggled to wrap his head around some of those skills. Alend smirked; he’d barely scratched the surface when it came to some of the things he’d taught his son.

He hoped Ein would forgive him. He couldn’t remember how many times he’d thought that thought, but he hoped nonetheless. When it was all over, when the business with the Great Winter and Aedrasil was done, he would sit down with his wife and children in the forge and explain everything. Ein had a right to know, not just about the situation of his upbringing, but about Alend’s own past and how a Kingsblade, one of Faengard’s elite, had ended up in Felhaven.

The smoke in the air thickened until its acrid taste was all Alend could think about. They’d climbed high onto the hill by now, a mattress of stunted grass and withered trees below them to the left, the Sleeping Twins behind them. There was a pillar of black and grey ahead, rising from somewhere on the other side of the hill, fading into a cold, white haze on the other side of the horizon. The slope flattened out. The horses crunched across the loose rock and around a bend, taking the two men down the other side of the hill. Adeir came into view.

“Mother Anturia,” he muttered.

He heard them before he saw them. Voices, a mixture of high pitched wailing and cries of despair, overlapped by the gruff barking of feral men. Alend almost didn’t want to look, but the village was right beneath him and he had no choice.

Adeir reminded him of Felhaven in more ways than one. A small collection of square-cut houses and flimsy fences, a modest inn at the centre, a noticeboard at the point where all the roads met. Thatched roofs burned to a crisp, crackling with violent flames, neat paths splattered with blood and sprawling bodies. The bandits swarmed the village, rusty blades flashing, looting everything from food to jewellery and ragged clothing. They wore crudely cut animal hides and weathered rags themselves, no strangers to the harsh wilderness. In a world on the brink of destruction, you took what you could get.

A group of the bandits dragged a woman from a burning house, laughing through her kicks and screams. They prised her arms apart, revealing two children clutching desperately to her dress. As Alend watched, they separated the three and dragged her around the corner, out of sight. Someone gripped his hand and he realized it was Talberon.

“Don’t look,” he said. “And try not to listen, either.” Alend’s hand was on his Rhinegold blade, his knuckles as white as bone. His teeth were clenched so tightly it hurt.

“Cenedria have mercy.” He squeezed his eyes shut. The woman’s fate was sealed, but what of her children? What would they do to them? The boy would either be killed or forced to work, but the girl…

“Alend!” Talberon’s voice was sharp and commanding. “Remember what we talked about! By the time we get down there, it’ll be far too late!”

With a shaky breath, Alend removed his hand from the hilt of his sword. It was by far the hardest thing he’d ever done, that simple motion of lifting his fingers off the grooved leather and back to his reins. He hoped he’d never have to do it again.

Adeir was past them now, and he finally dared open his eyes. He kept them fixed straight ahead, into the lightening sky as they began their descent from the hilltop. The sounds of strife behind him grew fainter and fainter until at last he couldn’t hear them anymore. The smell of smoke and burning hair faded to a mere aftertaste in the air, and then nothing at all. Alend glanced behind him and saw nothing but the horizon, studded with runted trees and bushes.

“You’re telling me this is happening all over the world?” he asked. His jaw was sore.

Talberon was scribbling in his book, murmuring under his breath. He nodded once. “It’s in our nature, unfortunately,” he said. “When we run out of food and supplies, we take it from others. It’s the way of the world.”

“Never,” Alend growled. “We would never do that, not in Felhaven.”

“Really?” Talberon looked up, regarding him with a sad look. “What if it was your wife and children starving to death? Would you take from another family to ensure the survival of your own?”

“I would, but no more than necessary.”

“And what is the definition of ‘necessary?’” the Druid asked. “If there was a loaf of bread, maybe ‘necessary’ would be half of that loaf. But what happens after you finish that half? You can’t take the other half, because the other family has eaten it. So in this case, isn’t ‘necessary’ really the full loaf? That way, your family survives for twice as long.”

Alend struggled to think of a response, but his mind felt dull and sluggish from the hours of hard riding. “I would never destroy their home,” he said instead. “I would never kill them, never touch their women or children.”

“I believe you, and I would say that most humans would never do that. But when nature throws everything at us, we go back to our roots—our base instinct to survive. And when that happens, we are no longer humans. We are animals. Demons, even”

Talberon pocketed his pen and showed Alend the map once more, pointing to a spot near the entrance to the Sleeping Twins. “That’s where we are now. I expect we’ll be at Caerlon in the next day or two, and from there the Royal Road should take us the rest of the way.”

Alend squinted at the double-spread inside the book. “Where’s Adeir? Wasn’t it there just a few minutes ago?”

“It’s gone. I took it off the map.”