I caught up to Bran just as the last of the daylight bled from the evening sky. He was a shadow in the darkness of the woods, his movements fearful and erratic, pain driving away his accustomed calm. I tore a length from the hem of my shirt and pressed it against the spot where the arrow protruded from his skin. Without light, I did not trust myself to remove it without injuring him further.
I held his reins and spoke to him in soft words. I told him he was safe, and the pain had to be endured but would soon pass, and he had nothing to fear from the dark. I hoped everything I said was true.
A few stars shone overhead through the narrow gaps between trees, and by them I could find a heading and make my way, step by agonizing step, to the standing stones and the encampment beside them. Blood flowed freely from the wound on my shoulder, and my sleeve turned stiff and sticky. Bran bled as well, until the makeshift bandage had soaked through and his steps slowed.
“Only a little farther,” I said, but with only the light of the waning moon to guide us, I had no way of knowing how much longer we had to walk.
At last, a distant light appeared between the trees, and another, and a soft red glow that might have been a campfire. We were almost there.
I had thought the warband would reach the camp ahead of me, as slowly as I had made my way through the forest, but I found most of the shelters empty and only a few of the forest folk gathered around the fire. A young woman with a baby tied to her back asked what had become of them. I had to confess I did not know.
I tended to Bran’s wound and mine and waited. The moon retreated from the sky, and the night closed in around the fire. Three men stood watch, facing away, and only three more waited with me as dawn drew nearer and nearer with no sign of the others.
Dread sunk, cold and heavy, from my throat to my belly. I had not maintained the diversion long enough. The warband had been taken captive, or slaughtered on the bare ground of the fort, their rescue a failure.
I stood, my harpoon in hand and my vision spotted red from the fire. I had to act. Bran needed time to recover, and I wouldn’t risk him taking a fall in the dark, but I could go alone. I shut my eyes and waited for them to adjust to the dark.
This was foolishness. If the warband had indeed fallen, there was nothing I could do on my own to save them—and the odds that they would be dead already by the time I came within sight of the ring-fort were higher than I was willing to consider.
But I was a warrior born, and I had an enchanted weapon. I could not wait quietly here.
I put the camp at my back and walked into the forest, my free hand outstretched. The light of the camp’s embers receded and left me all but blind, and I stumbled forward, branches tearing at my clothing and roots rising up to catch my feet.
If I were injured, I would tend to it later. My only thought was to reach the ring-fort.
The shapes of trees emerged from the black. They were silhouetted against a dull, orange glow, as if the sun had crept a hand’s breadth above the horizon to observe the chaos upon the hills. Smoke stung my eyes and throat as I drew in a sharp breath. Oeric’s fields were all ablaze.
With my sight suddenly and horribly restored, I ran. The air filled with drifting embers and the shouts of men. The trees had not yet caught, damp as they were from recent rain, but the fire would soon dry them. A terrible vision of flames spreading across the fields and devouring the forest all the way to the coast overtook my mind.
Clouds of smoke wreathed the ring-fort, and flames licked at its base. Shadowy figures darted back and forth like frightened crows or angry ghosts. I covered my face with my arm, my eyes watering, and searched for anyone I might recognize.
A woman with a child on her back stood close to where I emerged from the trees. Her face was Cullen’s, rendered soft and framed with a tangle of long curls—his elder sister, Ciannait. Clinging to her shoulders was her only son, a boy of seven or eight and the future chieftain of the last remnants of his people.
They both were unharmed, though ash streaked Ciannait’s face and the hems of her clothing were torn and ragged.
“Eske!” she called out.
We had barely spoken over the course of my stay amongst her people. I had not expected her to know my name. “What happened?” I asked.
“Cullen set the fire to cover our escape,” she said, “but we’ve all been separated. I don’t know where he is.”
I picked up a burning branch and pressed the unlit end into her hand. “Go back to the camp and wake the others. We have to keep the fire from spreading into the trees.”
She looked up at me, her dark eyes bloodshot. “You’ll bring my brother back?” she asked. “He may be a fool, but he’s all I have.”
“I swear it,” I said, and I silently begged the fool in question not to make me a liar.
Ciannait raised her torch and adjusted the weight of her son, and she set off into the trees. I began the treacherous climb to the ring-fort.
After only a few paces, my boots slipped at the edge of a ditch—an irrigation channel connected to the one I had stumbled into on my way out of the fort the first time. At this time of year, the fort likely kept no store of water to fill it—the rain was frequent enough—but it could have been wide enough to slow the progress of the fire.
I grasped handfuls of grain stalks and dry grass, tearing them from the edges of the ditch. The dark hollow in the earth opened up to the sky. At the bottom, slick mud caught a little of the terrible light.
My clumsy, half-formed plan might have worked, but I was alone. I could not identify the shadowy figures in the field with me, so thick was the smoke. The people running for the trees could have been the captives, set free at last, or Oeric’s men pursuing them.
Someone approached me from the direction of the ring-fort. By his build, he was a man, but his clothing was so covered in ash and mud that its color was indistinct. I could not tell whether he wore mail. I stood and reached for my harpoon as he came closer.
The face that emerged from the smoke was a familiar one—Diarmuid of the war-band, sharp-nosed and scarred. “Eske? I thought you’d gone—or you’d been killed.”
“Not yet,” I said. “Help me clear the ditch. It will keep the fire from spreading to the trees.”
In several places, it already had, but I hoped the recent rain would halt it where I could not.
So we worked, and the fire raged on, and my eyes and throat burned as the smoke grew thicker. More men and women of the warband joined us, and I believed that some of Oeric’s men did as well, though I could not be certain.
And, at last, we found Cullen, in the ditch with a ragged hole torn into his side. He was half-delirious from the loss of blood, but he yet breathed. I carried him on my back to the encampment, and told myself I was doing so as a favor to his sister, and not because I could not bear to let him out of my sight again.
Oeric’s fields burned, but the forest remained. Morning brought a soft rain that quelled the fire. We had lost two of the warband, and one captive fell to an arrow, but the forest folk would continue on another day.
I could not help but feel dread, that morning beside the fire, as the mist rose up from the ground and chased away the last of the smoke. There truly were so few of them left, and they had lost their home, itself a refuge they had fled to half a generation ago, leaving behind the lands of their forefathers. Oeric might not have had the power to enact his vengeance upon them, but King Wulfric certainly did. The burning of the hills would bring his wrath down upon these scarred lands. The remnants of the warband could not defend them, especially now when their last fortifications lay in ruins.
They’d have to flee again—to the coast, or deeper into the woods, and I could not say what might become of them then.
I helped Ciannait bind Cullen’s wounds. A day of rest helped his strength return, though he likely wouldn’t hold a spear for another week, at least, and I wasn’t certain when he’d be on his feet again. Diarmuid would lead the warband in the meantime.
Ciannait instructed me to make sure her brother didn’t try to move about, and she left us alone under the oilcloth tent.
Cullen’s face, turned moon-white from lack of blood, was a mix of guilt and relief. “I’ve made a mess of things, haven’t I?” he asked no one in particular. “My brother should have chosen Diarmuid to begin with.”
“Well,” I said, “you did set fire to the land between the forest and the great watchtower. It’s only luck and the weather that kept it from getting worse.”
“Luck, the weather, and you, if my sister tells it right.” He grimaced and pressed his hand to his injured side.
“I did what I could.”
He sighed. “What are you going to do now?”
“I’m going to do what Ciannait told me, and look after you for the evening,” I said. “If you tear out your stitches, she’ll have my hide.”
That drew out a smile. “Fine, then. Thank you. What I meant was—” He paused, fidgeting with his blankets. “You came here for the knife. It’s out of both of our reach, as long as the god of the grove sees us as unworthy. Even felling the tree might not work.”
I shook my head. “I would not take it without permission. My employer told me a lie. The relic never belonged to him, did it?”
“I can’t say,” Cullen said with a shrug. “Not for hundreds of years, at least.”
What other falsehoods had Deinaros told me? Was the Sage’s Mirror not the door to the other world that he had claimed it to be? Could he indeed open the way into the other world, or was I to be cast aside as soon as I had completed his tasks?
Anger flared in my chest. Deinaros had lied to me just as he had lied to Cricket, telling her she was to be his apprentice while she spent her days dusting the books she was not permitted to read. Cricket, however, was a child, and I could not expect her to know any better. I had been taken in with false hope and empty promises, and had no such excuse.
Cullen’s hand, warm and rough, crossed the worn blanket and wrapped around mine.
“You could stay,” he said. “The gods know we could use your help. And I, well, I quite like your company. It’s a hard life, here, but there’s a life here for you, if you want it.”
I could have stayed. I saw that life spool out from me—the days would be long, but the years would be short. I’d have a home again, and a family, and though I’d have to fight for each meal and each roof under which I lay my head, but I would no longer walk the world alone.
In doing so, I would leave Khalim to his fate. I could not allow my tale to end without fulfilling my promise to him.
I let Cullen’s hand go. “In another lifetime,” I said, “I would stay with you. In this one, I still have a long way to travel. I’m sorry.”
Back to Chapter LIX: The Edge of the Forest
Forward to Chapter LXI: The Empty Tower
And with that, this arc has concluded. We’re off toward the end! Thanks for reading.
Space Whales Press 
2 thoughts on “Journey to the Water Chapter LX: The Fire”