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CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Druadaen stood next to the Sarmese trade station. Or rather, what was left of it.

The palisade surmounting the low, rectangular berm was now an uneven row of charred black teeth. In the bailey beyond, the remains of its buildings were little more than scorched outlines and a few crumbling rafters.

Druadaen turned to look back at the small, narrow bay that led to it, fed by a small river to the north. From the post’s site on a small rise above the surrounding floodplain, he could make out one of the Fur-Drake’s Oath’s small boats upon the softly rolling waters. Its crew had tossed an anchor in the shallows, keeping it close to a single, sparless mast poking rakishly above the swells: the resting place of a Sarmese monoreme that had been burned down to her plimsoll line before sinking.

“News,” called Lorgan’s voice from behind.

Druadaen turned, saw the Tyrmcysan captain clambering up the back of the berm. “From the divers?”

Lorgan nodded as he came down the other side. “Almost all the crew was aboard. Naked, locked to the oars, and burned alive. Az-apit says there’s no sign of a fight and there are no goods left aboard.”

“So, not an attack. It was a stab in the back.” Certainly in keeping with S’Dyxan tactics.

Lorgan nodded. “Same with the outpost, from the look of it. Gates were not forced, no one was manning the palisade. Judging from some of the bottles found in the ashes, there may have even been a celebration underway when the abominations came. Every human skeleton down there was naught but bare bones before the fire started.”

Druadaen frowned. “I suppose the two attacks could be separate acts of treachery, but I doubt it.”

“So do I. The outpost was stripped as carefully as the ship was. And only then was it burned. Some of the guards down fought back, though; more than a few abominate skeletons among the normal ones.” At Druadaen’s questioning look, he added, “Trust me; you always know the skeleton of an abomination.”

“It sounds as if you’ve seen more than a few.”

Lorgan nodded, but instead of revealing how and where he’d come by his experience with them, he gestured to the south.

Krøn, the leader of the crew’s small contingent of Ruildine horsemen, was approaching from the sward that fanned out on the landward side of the outpost. His mount kept trying to push its canter into a gallop, eager to stretch out from long weeks aboard ship. “Whoever did this left with a good number of horses,” the Ruildine captain reported as he drew up to them, “maybe as many as a dozen. All heading east. All heavily burdened.”

“From the trade station or the monoreme, do you think?”

Krøn shrugged. “Can’t tell. All their hooves are shod in the southern fashion. A number of abominate tracks flank them for a while, then the monsters began falling off. They spread out singly or in small groups before leaving.” He waved his arm from the northeast to the southeast. “They were all heading back to higher ground, from the look of it.”

“Such as it is,” Lorgan amended, nodding at the flat flood plain before he turned to look squarely at Druadaen. “You’re sure this job is worth the risk?”

Druadaen couldn’t help smiling. “I wasn’t sure when I agreed to it. I’m no more sure now. That’s why I asked you to hold my valuables.”

Krøn nodded at the ruined trading post. “But that changes things a mite, no? Say you manage to truss up an abomination. Say you even manage to drag it back here alive. Then what? If we’ve left by then, what shelter will you have? And how will you get it to Sarma?”

Lorgan looked up at the rider. “Well, we might be able to pick him up, if the timing works out. We’re putting in at the Luthmaand outpost for a bit. Take on some supplies, give some Ruildines I know some time among their own people.”

Krøn’s first reflex—a smile—dropped off immediately. He glanced at Druadaen, then back to Lorgan. “All so we can backtrack and take another look here, eh?”

Lorgan’s smile was beatific. “Something like that.”

Krøn shrugged. “Well, I’ll be happy to speak my own tongue for a few days. But it will keep us all from seeing home as soon as we might. And just to discover this place as empty as we left it.” He spared Druadaen a sardonic smile. “So be a friend and spare us a pointless trip.”

“How?”

“If you die out there, send word, yeh?”

“I will do my very best.”

The Ruildine cavalryman laughed, nodded approvingly, and rode off, calling back, “Your horse is off the skiff and your bags and saddle are ashore. I’ll have my men see to tacking it.”

“Much obliged!” Druadaen replied, using the odd Ruildine idiom for “thanks.”

Lorgan didn’t speak until Krøn had ridden well beyond earshot. “Now, not that I’m averse to inheriting all your silver, but I have to ask: why are you committing suicide in such an original fashion?”

Druadaen kept his explanation not only shorter, but more vague than the one he’d presented to the viziers of Sarmasid; the fewer details he shared, the less he had to resort to misleading statements. He had no wish to lie to Lorgan, just as he had no wish to flatly rebuff him. But one of the captain’s eyebrows crept higher as he concluded with, “So, all in all, by fetching an abomination for the viziers, I may drop two kites with one stone: improve my own circumstances and work against a sworn foe of my people.”

Lorgan stared at him for a long moment. “Well,” he drawled, “I would have liked to have heard the full truth, but a man’s business is his own business, as my father used to say.”

Abashed, Druadaen could only hope he wasn’t blushing, too. “If I could, I’d share the whole of my story, but… ”

“But?”

“You’d never believe it.”

Lorgan’s smile was almost a smirk. “Try me.”

“Some other time. Besides, I’m not sure that anyone who has the full story is safe from those who’d like to keep it quiet.” He paused for emphasis. “I suspect that’s why you didn’t share the details of what happened after you cut out the galleys in Pasbigt. The less told, the safer the listener.”

Lorgan put up his palms in a warding gesture. “Say no more! My curiosity is hereby withdrawn!” He shook his head. “Now, although its long odds that you’ll survive long enough to have use of them, here are some words of warning.

“Firstly, if you prize your life—and I’m not convinced you do—don’t go too far south.”

Druadaen frowned. “But that would bring me closer to settled lands, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, and that’s the problem. Food is hard to come by out here in the Godbarrows, and it is full of hungry stomachs attached to big teeth. So, to survive, some of those stomachs have to travel to where food is more plentiful.”

Druadaen nodded. “Settlements. So, they cluster near the frontiers of the Broken Lands?”

“They do, and it’s not just abominations, either. It’s everything in the Godbarrows that is so hungry that it forgets any fear of us.”

Having touched upon the Godbarrows, Lorgan stayed on that topic and reeled off a list of what Druadaen would encounter as he wandered further east. The only humans he was likely to encounter outside walled villages were those few who—for reasons of duty, desperation, or derangement—had no choice to traverse those dangerous lands. He mentioned strange remains of the civilizations that had dwelt there: plains and valleys where magic phenomena still persisted and odd mechanisms of forgotten purpose protruded from the loam. Some claimed these were what remained of the last defenses against the Annihilators and their servile demons. Others insisted the invaders had brought them to help them lay waste to Great Hystzos and all its works. Amidst these strange, or even surreal landscapes, all manner of creatures roamed. Not merely abominations or impossibly large specimens of familiar species, but supragants of legendary size, as well as the ferocious cryptigants which preyed upon them.

“How far do the Godbarrows stretch?” Druadaen asked.

“All the way to the Cloudcap Mountains,” Lorgan replied. “And for the rare soul which can find a way through those peaks, they are rewarded by lands that are worse still: the Shuns.”

“And what lives there?”

“Everything I’ve mentioned and more. All lost in the vast reaches of those lands. It’s said they stretch halfway around the world. Plains become deserts, which become mountains, which finally flatten back into plains. Again and again and again.”

Lorgan, like the best storytellers, partook of the wonder he conveyed with his words. “And there one may come across ruins that precede those in the Godbarrows, of empires that were long fallen when the people of Hystzos were still island-bound fisher-folk who dared not sail behind the sight of their own shores.”

“So those ruins are—what? Many thousands of years old?” Tales of Arrdanc’s pre-Cataclysm rose unbidden in Druadaen’s mind.

“Maybe older than that,” Lorgan sighed. “They are mentioned in all the histories, and in all the legends before those. It’s said that they should all be dust by now, but they’re not. Some are made of strange stone that no one has been able to assay.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Lorgan answered, “no known substance can reduce it, not even aqua fortis. There are also strange clockwork devices in the midst of these ruins, their metal tarnished more than rusted—although they should just be so many flakes and flecks if they were simply cast from iron or bronze.” When he finished, he kept staring to the east.

Druadaen suspected that for all Lorgan’s awe-filled warnings, the captain yearned to see these places for himself. After allowing a few silent moments to pass, he cleared his throat. Lorgan seemed to see him anew. “I know you have no alchemist aboard,” Druadaen said apologetically, “but I would ask one last favor of you: can you tell me what these labels say?” He had unslung the wood-framed case he had brought ashore for this purpose.

Lorgan raised an eyebrow at Druadaen’s request, leaned over to peer into the sturdy box; three rows of vials stared back at him.

“Where did you get these?”

“From those highwaymen who ambushed me on the road to Pakobsid,” Druadaen answered.

Lorgan nodded, squinted to read the labels. A moment later, one eyebrow rose slightly.

It stayed that way for quite some time.


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