At Least He's Not On Fire: A Tour of the Things That Escape My Head (20 page)

So long ago.

Umaryn fell to the ground shortly after Malwynn’s mind drifted away. She sat cross legged as he was. “Thirty two bodies. That leaves one hundred thirty five unaccounted for, assuming dad’s population count was right. What did you say that would mean?”

Malwynn blinked several times to clear his mind and return to the present, “I thought it meant this was the Empire’s deed. They animate their victims and bring them home to put them to work. Like the necromancer Marcus killed. He had undead with him.”

“Do you think the Empire did this?” Umaryn asked, dragging the tip of an old pair of pliers in the dirt of the street, drawing the shape of a segment of armor she’d imagined while daydreaming.

“Of course they did. We fought back against their patrol, so they came and ruined New Picknell. They took our dead, and left us this-, this destruction.”

“What do we do? I can’t just move on from this brother. I swore an oath to find justice and I will see to it, come Hell or high water.”

Malwynn nodded, his eyes fixed on Marissa’s doorstep, “There is no hell. Just the ancestor state.”

“Mother said the spirits know there’s more beyond where they are. Heaven and Hell. And I’m saying Hell won’t stop me from smashing the skulls of the people responsible for this apart.”

“Whatever,” Malwynn said bitterly, avoiding the bulk of the reasonless argument.

“Don’t whatever me. We need a plan Mal. Where are we going?
 
What are we going to do? You’ve always been the smarter one. Dad always made you read.”
 

The compliment caught Malwynn by surprise and he smiled. It was his first smile since seeing black smoke in the sky. He spent a few moments analyzing the potential future ahead of them, and then committed to a plan. “We gather what we can. We head north and west to look for the tracks of who did this. See if they headed into the Empire. If we have to, we head to Graben itself and find out who did this.”

“How will we manage that? We’ve never been anywhere Mal. We’ll stick out like a sore thumb in the Empire. We’ll never be able to find anyone there without rousing suspicion. We’d get ourselves killed like everyone here.”
 

Malwynn smiled in a way that made Umaryn uneasy. It was predatory, almost wolf-like. “We won’t rouse any suspicion if that Amaranth armor Marcus left for us survived the fire. Father locked it away in the basement in his metal chest. If it made it through the fire, we should be able to waltz over the border and straight to Graben. Then, it’s a simple matter of carefully inflicting pain on people until we find who did this to our families.”

It was Umaryn’s turn to smile like a predator.

- Chapter Three -

THE ROAD TO OCKHAM’S FRINGE

“I hate to say this, but the purple looks good on you,” Umaryn said, grudgingly looking at her brother in the Amaranth armor. A stroke of luck had preserved just two sets of the salvaged gear.

“If you hate to say it, then don’t say it,” Malwynn returned, adjusting the fit of the armor. It made him itchy.

“Yeah yeah yeah,” Umaryn said, adjusting the fit of her own armor.
 

Malwynn looked and took her in. The armor they both wore was primarily made of leather. Umaryn said it was Gvorn leather, but Malwynn couldn’t tell. His sister probably whispered to the thick skin and it told her its name. He’d never understand The Way. She was right though. The armor was good looking. The smooth dark brown leather had a rich and earthy tone to it, like the delicious Oakdale chocolate their mother bought from the markets in Daris. Arranged geometrically across the entire leather surface of the armor were steel studs, or rivets, that added extra protection. Many were shiny, almost like chrome in nature, but a sizeable amount were rust colored, stained from the shed blood of their original wearer. The set of armor Malwynn wore had a hole in the arm and chest where he’d shot two arrows into the wearer, when he was still alive. Malwynn snuck a finger into the chest hole with a sense of satisfaction. He’d already killed one Amaranthine warrior, and was excited to kill more.

“That won’t do, will it?” Umaryn asked randomly.

“What? What won’t do?” Malwynn responded, his finger falling out of the hole almost shamefully.

“That hole. No front line warrior would wear a suit of armor with a hole in it like that. I can mend it, come here and stand still for me.” Umaryn walked over to her brother and squared his body to hers. The two looked strange standing in the decimated village with nothing but a horse, a Gvorn, and burnt rubble around them.
 

Umaryn took the collar of his armor into her hands and closed her eyes, “Armor from the land of the Purple Queen do you hear me?” She whispered softly to the armor. Malwynn heard no response, but he could tell that his sister did.

“Mmm. You must be in pain then.” She said to the armor. Malwynn judged that she wasn’t so much responding to the armor, as she was soothing emotions or sensations radiating from it. She seemed as if she was an attentive mother talking to a fitful baby. Umaryn’s hands slipped free of the collar and drifted downwards, drawing geometric shapes with the tips of her delicate, yet incredibly strong fingers. Malwynn’s mind raced with the patterns her fingers drew, sensing on some strange mystical level that the shapes carried meaning and power, but he failed to comprehend and understand fully what she was doing. As her nails and fingertips dragged back and forth and around she slowly changed their rhythm and dance to a circular motion that ringed the hole in the chest.
 

She began to whisper again, this time in a similar soothing tone, but full of authority, and resonance, “Let this wound to your spirit be no more. Remember the memory of your perfect self armor, and protect my brother with pride, and my admiration.” Malwynn dipped his head down in amazement and watched as the ragged puncture in the armor slowly folded in upon itself like a flower escaping from a full bloom, and resting in the night. Within just scant seconds, the hole was gone, the sheen of the leather had taken on a new brightness, and Malwynn could smell the freshness in the armor return, as if it had literally just been made.

Umaryn suddenly stood up straight, and adjusted the armor roughly on her brother, smiling, “There. Much better. Both holes are fixed too. Best repair spell so far.”

Malwynn looked at the armor where the second arrow hole had been. There was absolutely no sign of there ever having been damage, “Wow sister. That’s incredible. I will never understand how you do what you do… I am in awe of The Way.”

“You and me both. Let’s get what we can gather and get moving. The longer we take, the further away they people who did this get.”

Despite hours scouring the ruins for food, there was none worth bringing. No morsels of meat, no slices of bread, and certainly nothing sweet to take the bitter taste of ash and death out of their mouths. The twin’s bellies cramped and ached from hunger, and once they’d abandoned hope of finding anything to satisfy their need for food, they committed themselves to returning to the hills where they’d left behind the berries.
 

As Tinder and Bramwell bore them north to the fruit-bearing hills the brother and sister lamented their loss. Umaryn spun her horse about at a rise in the earth and stopped, looking back on the grey waste of New Picknell. What remained of the village at the bottom of the hill looked more like a smudge of memory than a town. Tiny curls of delicate white smoke escaped from underneath massive piles of rubble, heading towards a strange grave far up in the sky.

Malwynn turned his massive Gvorn about and brought it to a rest standing beside his sister. They sat quietly, reins in trembling hands, both watching the smoke rise.

“I wonder what happens to our souls when we die, and don’t become undead and aren’t set free by the apostles? Is it oblivion? Is it hell? Is it painful?” She asked him, emotionless, seeking some kind of solace.

Malwynn sighed deeply, “I don’t know. I hope it’s better than the fate of those who die and become undead. We all know that’s torment, pure and simple.”

“I think dying and not coming back as an undead is almost as good as being blessed and becoming an ancestor spirit. I think it’s just restful.”

The brother shrugged. “I wish I knew. If it’ll help you sleep at night, then I suppose it’s like restful nothingness. Like when you wake up and can’t quite remember your dreams. Although there’s no waking up. No burden of eternal existence as an ancestor, and no rage of the undead. I guess it could be worse.”

Umaryn seemed satisfied by that line of logic. She nodded slowly, letting it sway her back to a better mood, “I want everyone who did this to us to die Malwynn. And I don’t want a single one of them to be blessed. I don’t care if they become undead, but I do not want them to poison the world being spirits. These kind of people can’t be allowed to influence the world anymore. They must be removed from existence entirely.”

“Erased.”

She nodded, “Like New Picknell was.”

Oddly enough, no animals had touched the berries. They remained untouched in the finely woven wicker baskets their mother had fashioned when they were children. Both were thankful for the return to the hill not only for the dark blue berries but also for the mementos.

They had precious little evidence now that their family had ever existed. Fleeting memories pulled to and fro in their cluttered and vengeance-clouded minds. Small peeks at blue sky through dark clouds. Holding onto the baskets brought them back to their childhood and back to clear memories that were still untouched by the events they’d just experienced.

They ate a full belly of the rich spoils from the day prior, careful not to eat too much, picked a full bag more, and left heading west towards the rails where they could hopefully find a way north after their prey.

They found tracks about ten miles from the north hill. The hard ground had hoof shaped pockmarks ten paces wide heading northwest, almost the same direction as they were heading initially. Malwynn was not an expert tracker by any means, but he could read the way the dirt was thrown, and could approximately tell their direction, number, and relative speed. Whoever had ridden away from New Picknell had done so at a comfortable pace. The arrogance of might made them feel safe. Malwynn wanted badly to prove their arrogance wrong.

“I think there were about ten of them. No more than twenty. The ground isn’t that torn up. Whoever it was moved far north, away from the direct line of the rail from town. I’d bet they rode northwest, and picked up a chartered train. Who has the wealth to charter a train Umaryn?”

“The Purple Queen,” she replied.

“Exactly. Makes perfect sense. Charter a small train with an empty freight car, disgorge your mounted warriors, send them south away from the rail so we don’t see them get off the train at the rail stop near town, and that’s it, the end of New Picknell. They escape the way they came, and reverse the train back to Graben. It’s simple. Not even fancy, or hard to accomplish if you bring enough warriors, and necromancers.”

“Bastards.” Umaryn spat the word.