In the last chapter of The Path of Poison…
Sepp, apprentice and adopted son of the apothecary and hex man, Búcher, live in the northernmost village of the northernmost canton of the theocratic Veneracy of Silverden. Danger was on the way to the village as an internal conflict between two cantons had broken out into open conflict, and we left the two apothecaries just as trouble seemed to find them…
It was like rolling thunder in the distance, but it didn’t stop. Sepp spun around to Búcher, who was already shoving a pack into the boy’s arms. The chests of their belongings were on a little board with wheels used for moving the rare deliveries the hex man sometimes ordered in. Búcher just nodded to the door as he slung on his own pack. Sepp quickly donned a travelling cloak and tall, conical flat-topped hat with a flopping, wide brim. He then made to look outside, pulling the cloak about himself, but as he turned, he immediately crashed into an armoured body in the doorway.
He skidded back with a frightened choke. The worst thoughts flooded into his mind. He tensed, unsure of what to even do. A face peered in, wearing a helmet with a familiar crest. The commander from earlier. But the wave of relief that washed through his chest was stopped in its tracks.
“We need to go NOW,” he said, panic in his eyes. “An advance force are rampaging through the village, meaning more’s on the way. No time to pack your chests, take what you can carry and follow these men to a group ready to flee at the top of the street just yonder.” He motioned with his gauntlet to the long lane just a few feet beyond the house.
The commander shot a glance between himself and the two temple guardsmen before running back out. The two men looked absolutely terrified. Sepp turned to Búcher who patted his pack and nodded—he had the hexes with him. More than letting an enemy find something so dangerous, they both didn’t relish the thought of their secret trade somehow being outed to the entire village. Only a few people knew, and they liked it that way.
The guardsmen were familiar faces, not friends or even really acquaintances, but lads from the village. No better hands to be in, thought Sepp, folk who knew the place. Ass they left the shop, the guards flanked the apothecaries and darted their heads around, inspecting every moment of the chaos. Warriors on horseback cascaded about the village roaring—not even temple guard, but mercenaries who ought to be on some expedition into the eastern interior. They weren’t especially well-armed or armoured, but that just meant they travelled fast. They looked and sounded, as best could be made out, like they were from a ways out east. Clay-skinned fighters with dark red hair from the city states. Maybe some Minosmirii band out for glory. If so, they wouldn’t find it doing this. A curse on them and whatever Hero they worshipped, thought Sepp.
They turned up the long lane now. It was mostly the backs of other houses, and was relatively straight as opposed to the more irregular arrangement of the house fronts, behind which blades and spear-tips might lurk. It was decently wide, too, but the guardsmen had decided to stand before and behind Sepp and Búcher. They were doing a commendable job given the awful din of battle around them. Voices cried and were cut silent, orders bellowed with pangs of desperation, steel crashed and rang, and horses snorted and stamped. Sepp looked back only once. More smoke than should ever be seen was rising from the village.
Safety, of a kind, lay a short ways ahead. They could see a throng of nervous figures just beyond the mild bend of the laneway. All of a sudden, however, from out of the cacophony of the rolling thunder hooves, there came several clear peals. The kind of fear only an animal feels, that doesn’t creep but strikes immediately to the front of every sense, now arrested Sepp’s consciousness. Shouts in a tongue he didn’t understand were met with roars from the guardsmen. The fellow in front shoved Sepp behind him and Búcher followed. They aimed their spears at the oncoming horsemen, four in number, and yelled for the two apothecaries to run. But the enemy was already upon them.
Two horsemen sped up and behind them. They were surrounded. Sepp and Búcher had instinctively bowed low. The guardsmen’s spears clanged off round-shields and one received a nasty gash in the cheek from a riposte. From behind now came the gallop, and Sepp had but barely turned before the steam of horse-breath was all he could see. He tried to make himself as small as possible between the rampaging beasts. The horsemen crashed past them, bellowing, blades whooshing through the air. The second they passed, Sepp shook his head and looked about. The horsemen were fighting. The boy looked down. Búcher as in the dirt, grasping his chest. Blood stained the dusty dirt ground. His tunic had been torn and all inside was red. His eyes fluttered spasmodically. Then another horseman came around again. Sepp didn’t have time to register what he was seeing. He flung himself low, cried out, and swung his pack into the warrior’s face. Some part of it caught on the helmet, and he was pulled from his saddle, crashing on the ground with a loud thud. Sepp fell backwards, still clutching his miraculously intact pack. The man was stunned. A spearhead was suddenly thrust through his exposed throat by a guardsmen. Other temple guard had arrived at the lane entrance, and the horsemen were being fended off. The guard looked Sepp in the eye and told him run, now. His limbs were pulled in two directions. He obeyed the one nearest to him. Búcher lay motionless. An awful writhing welled up in Sepp’s chest. Only seconds passed, but the image was burned into his mind as if pressed in over hours. All he could do was grab Búcher’s pack, and force out an apology. For what, he didn’t know.
Sepp kept his head down. He gasped loudly as he ran, and found himself moments later—mere moments away from it all—in the arms of another temple guard, who shook him into the moment. She looked behind him with a quizzical brow, and was about to ask Sepp a question when she met the eyes of the young man, whose expression gave her the answer. Her stern face softened for a moment, and she moved him a little more gently into the group. He looked around him. Four heavily armoured temple guard flanked the group of maybe twenty villagers—now refugees. The guard each carried hefty polearms, these were like a cross between a great spear and long-handled axe. The woman barked an order to them. Sepp didn’t even hear what it was, but moved when he felt the others shift around him, clutching Búcher’s pack to his chest, and focusing on anything else he could but it.
The village lay a mile or two back now. The northern country was a maze of rolling landscape, with all kinds of little gorges, bluffs, mounds with steep valleys, spurts of forest and smatterings of high grass and shrubbery. The day was well into its latter half. The light had become dimmer. Every so often, two guards rode out for a short while, sometimes when the group was stopped for a rest, sometimes while still moving. They were checking with other groups, each staying as low and diffused as possible to avoid notice by killers still not sated. By now the main invasion had most likely arrived and set up operations. It made Sepp feel ill. He had otherwise fallen into an oppressive numbness where time felt like it hadn’t shifted one ounce. The vile sensation that had taken up residence throughout his body hadn’t dulled, it had simply receded into some distance. He blankly recognized some of the countryside they passed through as good spots for certain flowers.
They walked through some of the night before the guardsman evidently leading them halted the group by a tall bluff. Three moons were out, and lent a vague pallor to the landscape, but not enough to disclose their location. As such, the guards didn’t permit a fire, not tonight, they couldn’t risk it. They’d stick out like a sore thumb, even all the way out here. But they did pass around salted meats and small-beer to the refugees—good soldierly food that would keep, and nothing too strong. It was the first time that day Sepp had set his packs down. He was glad for it. A lady had been passing around little clay bowls for everyone to use. He wasn’t sure he knew her face, but she smiled at him all the same. Others began to chatter with concerned tones, some with relief when the guards gave news of other groups.
Sepp was silent. He drank a decent measure of small-beer out of his bowl. Small-beer is all he’d ever really drank. Búcher had liked something harder and sometimes bought it from traders passing through from Voerlund. Had. Sepp downed the whole bowl when that came into his head. He allowed the thought of Búcher stumbling into the camp, bloody but bandaged, to enter his mind but he didn’t entertain it. Not after what he’d seen. He set his bowl down and sat against a rock, arms around his knees, and slowly released a ragged sigh. Something else came into his head then. A single word, fully formed, along with a rush of confusion, misery, and anger, that demanded prominence. He didn’t say it, but let it, and every single feeling that accompanied it, sit in the forefront of his mind until sleep overtook him.
“Dad.”
Oooh the story is getting really good already in this second installment! I can feel that familiar thrill that only comes with finding a new story that really grabs me! On to Chapter 3!