ONE: Hello to the Dead Men
No chain. No shackles. No whip coiled behind him in the hand of a man paid to punish, ready to strike at the least provocation – or none at all. No promise of pain, bright and hot and always shocking, even when the blow was anticipated.
No chain, but still one chain brother left.
And in Caida’s hand, a sword.
Caida was free. As long as he held a sword, he would remain so. He would walk into the maw of hell before he would return to slavery. He was already doing so with Nine’s help, though in truth Caida was struggling towards something, rather than away from the misery and bondage of his recent past. He could not say the same for his companion.
Nine had not liked the idea of following the retreating mists, not in the slightest. As he supported the limping, bloodied Caida in their scramble away from the imperial camp, he kept up a constant mutter of worry and complaint, both in the dialect of the west and his own tongue.
“Shit. Fuck-shit. See on väga halb kuradi idee. So fucking bad. If I die, Ten, I swear I will haunt you until you are fucking bones.”
“You can go back if you like.”
“That is the only idea that is worse than this one. Limp faster, you.”
“Keep an eye out for horses.”
“Oh, yes. I will catch and ride a dead pony, certainly, if I see one, because my life is shit anyway. If I see one.”
The mists were thinning, retreating faster than Caida and Nine could go, with Caida’s javelin-holed thigh hampering their speed. He had defeated several walking corpses and three of the beastlike riders, but not without cost. Now, they were following the retreating army of the dead back to Drum. Caida understood that what they were doing was madness. That they would both likely die. But behind them lay the empire and a short, brutal life of hard labor, in chains. It was just as certain a death as what lay before them, and one with greater misery and indignity to fill the space between their latest breaths, and their last.
Caida understood that this was what Nine was running away from. It was certainly reason enough, and more than enough, to walk willingly into a land covered in mists, ruled by sorcery, and guarded by the walking dead. But Caida was not running from anything. He was going to something. To the Kash, and to a nunnery there, because that was where the only copy of the unexpurgated testament of Andos supposedly could be found.
All of Wyeth, all of lady Anya’s dominion stood between. Therefore, he chased the mists into Drum. From there he would take the trail through the ancient Timor hills down to Wyeth, then continue northwards until the green grasses of his birthplace gave out and the sands of the Kash began.
It was as simple as that.
“The mists are almost gone. Do you think they will come to get us?” asked Nine.
“Who?”
“The shit-fuck imperials. Or the dead men. Either.”
Caida shook his head. “The cohorts are in confusion; their camp was just overrun. They won’t bother with the likes of us, now that we are out of arrow-range.”
“And the dead men?”
“Probably we will have to fight. Once we get to the place where the mists hold.”
“Jumalad vihkavad mind!”
“Just hold on to that saber.” Caida had his own sword, now, an ugly length of metal taken from one of the beast men. He’d made Nine take a second from one of the others he had felled.
“I’m not much for swords. I was always a knife man.”
“Try your best. No point stabbing a heart that doesn’t beat. Aim for the neck; they seem to stay down if you take their heads.”
“My life is shit.”
“You have mentioned it.”
They stumbled on, and the mists thinned away to the barest of wisps around and behind them as they fled. Glances back told them nothing about the disposition of the imperials, other than the fact that they were not pursuing; the terrain was gently undulating and covered with sere, sparse grass and clumps of dowager thorn. It was enough to hide them from the imperial encampment at the distance they had managed to get, and the encampment from their own view. Ahead, to the northeast, the mist had retrenched to the position it had occupied until that day. There it held. Slowly they advanced toward the gray-white wall that stretched high into the sky, and hid the city of Drum and, behind it, the Timor hills from view.
They found no horses.
Caida directed Nine towards the road that led to Drum. Once they were in the mists, he could use the road to orient himself to his surroundings. He did not want to wander, lost, if he could help it. He had spent most of his time in Drum cloistered in the monastery, but knew the surroundings well enough, so long as he had the road beneath his feet.
Step by step, now, the mists began to thicken once more.
“Are you sure about this?” Nine asked. “We could move along the edges of this. We don’t have to enter.”
“Let’s take a break,” said Caida.
Nine helped him to sit on the dusty stone of the imperial road, then sprawled out next to him. He covered his eyes with a sweaty, dirt-smeared arm. To the west, the muted sun was beginning to set.
“You can go,” Caida told him. “There are a few smallholdings in the area, certainly deserted now. At least you would find a well, and shelter if your luck is not completely out. Food is less likely. Those who fled would leave none behind if they could help it. Perhaps some things were left in the ground, maybe enough to get by. You would do best to move only at night, to avoid patrols. Go far enough east, over the hills, and you will come to the Broken Coast.”
“That’s a harsh land,” Nine replied. “Only the desperate go there.”
Caida shrugged. “That is who we are. You can go back west, but we both know what’s in that direction.” War and death. It did not need to be said.
“So we go east,” Nine mumbled.
“I must go north. You can go east.”
“You will die. However good you are with a sword, you will die. You are crazy.”
Caida was silent for a moment. Then he sighed. His thigh throbbed. He could deal with the pain, but he needed to clean the wound and stitch it up soon, else he would sicken, and die.
“Even if I had no other reason to travel north, I must go to Drum. It is the only chance I have to treat this wound. I won’t survive unless I do, and sooner is better.”
Nine groaned. Then he swore. Then he stood up and glared at Caida.
“Tell me your true name, then. I cannot haunt your bastard self unless I know it.”
“Caida.”
“Caida, I am Rasmus.” He held out his hand, and Caida took it. Nine – Rasmus – pulled him to his feet, then got Caida’s arm over his shoulder.
“Let us go say hello to the dead men, then,” he said, walking deeper into the mist in the gathering gloom.
Soon enough, and too soon for Rasmus’s comfort if his whispered muttering was any indication, the sorcerous mists surrounded them completely. Caida listened to his surroundings with every shred of his attention, but all was as still and silent as a grave. They walked shrouded and slow, able to see barely further than an outstretched arm. The only thing that connected them to the physical world, it seemed, were the stones of the road at their feet.
Almost, they walked headlong into the first standing corpse, but the smell of decay alerted Caida at the last moment.
As soon as he realized it was there, Caida brought his sword up. He was not a wheel, not when he had to be supported by Rasmus, but he could fight.
The dead man did not so much as twitch.
The thing stood in the middle of the road, arms loose at its side, clutching a hatchet. It was a farm tool, not a weapon of war, but deadly nonetheless. The creature had been dead long enough for its nose to be eaten away, and its skin had begun to slough. It had no eyes in its skull.
Rasmus swore and brought his own sword up in something resembling a guard position.
“Hold,” said Caida.
“Fucking kill it, Ten.”
“Wait.”
If the earlier battle was anything to go by, being this close to the revenant should have triggered an aggressive response from it. And yet, it did nothing beyond following their movements with slight turnings of its eyeless head.
“It isn’t attacking.”
“All the more reason to lop its head off!”
Caida wasn’t so sure. “That might be unwise.”
“What are you talking about?”
“These lowly dead, they have no minds of their own, I think. They are controlled by the ones who look like beasts. If it is not attacking, then it has been ordered not to attack. Or not ordered to attack. Either way, I do not wish to give it, and the others behind it, reason to.”
“What others?”
“Look carefully.” Behind the corpse in front of them, more human shapes could just be made out. Many more, standing almost shoulder to shoulder across the road. The mist concealed how many, and how deep their ranks were.
“Oh, Caida who was Ten, you have no idea how much I hate you right now.”
“They offer no violence, for whatever reason. I say we push through, carefully, and return the courtesy.”
“You are insane.”
“Go on, Rasmus. If I am wrong, I will apologize.”
“I should have strangled you in your sleep, that first night you came to the chain.”
“Too late now. Go.”
Rasmus went. Behind the first corpse stood more. Many, many more, positioned close enough together on the road that they were forced to turn sideways to shoulder past them. The stench of death was almost overpowering. Rank upon ragged rank of the raised dead guarded the road; but not, it seemed, from them. Caida wondered if the lady Anya had something to do with that. The thought carried with it a bright, sharp sting, as all thoughts to do with her did, and he turned his mind away from it.
And then they were through.
“Do you smell something?” asked Rasmus.
“Only the dead.”
“Good. It means I only imagined I shat myself.”