Previously on The Path of Poison…
Sepp, adopted son and apprentice to the hex man Búcher, attempted to flee from his home when war arrived on the doorstep, but Búcher was cut down in the escape. After being turned away from their supposed safe haven, Sepp took up with a trio of refugees intent on finding their own path…
Chapters 1-4 are available here, here, here, and here
After much debate that had petered out with exhaustion, a plan had finally been formed. Skivor had been the most against it, preferring a smaller and more independent group. Seemed about right for a woodsman, thought Sepp. Barosh and Seva were the most enthusiastic, and Sepp agreed. Outvoted and the logic laid out plainly for him numerous times, Skivor begrudgingly accepted. The plan was to head west and make for the Free City of Farhaven on the coast, and from there gain passage on a ship headed for Lundermark in the north. Simple, and far safer than several weeks’ travel on foot through unknown country, Skivor’s stubborn insisting upon his ability aside. It wasn’t that they didn’t understand him. No doubt he just wanted to feel in charge of something after the attack, but a ship was the most sensible option, though it might not the quickest. Farhaven wasn’t as far as Lundermark, so less travel on foot, but they would be taking the longer, potentially more expensive way around. Farhaven was a port city, the port city, bigger than Lundermark, bigger than the eastern mountain city Baletor, bigger even than the Macha capital or Dunmarrow tomb-keeps across the Great River. Farhaven ships and boats sailed through every navigable river in the known world, and there was always one of their number in any given dock. They might have to pay, but they’d have choice. Farhaven seemed like an exciting prospect, Barosh had said, and joked he’d try his being a ship’s hand rather than a farmhand. But truth was they had promised each other they’d try and remain together, partly out of an awkwardly admitted sentimentality as village kin, but mostly out of an obvious practicality of knowing people in a new place.
It was tougher going in the wilderness than the road, as bad a shape as it was in, but with Skivor expertly and spontaneously tracking them a path through the country, they were moving faster than they had been since they left the village. It felt like progress, good progress. But they’d be tired soon enough, and Seva asked Skivor to relent a little while she employed Sepp and Barosh to find something to eat. There was no time for hunting, but plenty for foraging. And besides, none of them knew any hunter’s charms you were meant to say over anything you killed. She had a pretty good idea of the edible plants and mushrooms about, they grew in much of northern Silverden, and the other two were mostly there to help identify anything poisonous. Sepp couldn’t help but feel a little odd, but he reminded himself he was primarily an apothecary, and Barosh had to be able to at least spot odd-looking growths in his work. In the field of poisons, signs could be subtle, but everything harmful in a plant or other such growth generally tended to share some kind of visible characteristic. Sometimes, Búcher had once said, you could just tell a plant was dangerous. But that comes with years of experience with poisons. Sepp had it, the others likely didn’t.
They had been gathering mushrooms and herbs chosen for flavour above all else, and had a decent collection. Barosh eagerly absorbed the lesson, and even the stoic Skivor had expressed relief when informed of this. People needed a little luxury, especially on a difficult road, Seva had said. It was her philosophy that a little softness, a little treat every day, does wonders for one’s mood and ability. Can’t always be chewing on gamey rabbit over a pit-fire. Become too hard, and you’re likely to crack and shatter. Turns out, this wasn’t Seva’s first time on the road or sleeping rough. The village—home—had been intended as a stopover that turned into a five year stay. But before that she’d been a traveller from the Silverden Canton itself, the capital of the whole Veneracy.
With all this, Sepp began to think he'd found himself in pretty good company. Skivor was a woodsman, for instance. Villages need wood for many things, and woodsmen obliged by gathering the right wood from the right places for the right purposes. As such, it was necessary they spent time in the wilds, and they learned things out there. Seva, Sepp thought, she was much like him—and Búcher, in a way. An earthy person but a creative mind, a good student, and, it appeared, good teacher. She seemed kind, thought the apothecary, but strong, who likes to have things pleasant around her, and the best way for that was helping the folk in your vicinity. And Barosh, as a farmhand he would have been intimately familiar with the charms and signs which hung over every single window and doorway on a farm. Chances were Sepp himself had mixed together a few of the light hexes which were no doubt sitting under barn earth or house floorboards. He hoped they were still doing their duty. And lastly, he thought, these people were his people, from his home, in the same situation as him. Maybe he'd hadn't left something that good behind after all.
The sun had just passed its meridian and the day would be getting on soon. But they should be in the town by then. Skivor had told, rather thank asked, Barosh to help him go get wood for a fire. He went a little reluctantly, partly because Skivor was still somewhat intimidating, but also because, Sepp thought amusedly, he seemed rather fond of Seva’s company, if the glances he sometimes threw her way said anything. But it was Sepp who was staying behind to help prepare the food, the other two having no idea what to do with the stems and roots of things that had been picked. They talked as they pulled things apart and pruned, bereft of utensils.
“You know, I haven’t said it yet, but…” She was hesitant to finish, but it was already out.
“Everything okay?”
“I’m actually planning to continue on from Lundermark. I want to go to Baletor. I have a cousin who lives there,” she looked down as she spoke, “moved out there from Silverden years ago now. Actually what prompted me to move, too,” she said with a little chuckle which faded quickly. “Should have been there long ago.”
“Well…” Sepp felt a little like he already had to prepare a goodbye, as ridiculous as that felt to him, “I mean you are free to go.” He was aware it didn’t sound right the second it left his mouth, and she made a kind of uncomfortable shifting in place. “Sorry, I mean-” She looked up at Sepp’s eyes darting around, looking for a better response. She smiled.
“I know what you mean, Sepp. Ah, it’s just, I think we’ve got a good little group here and I don’t want to make cracks in it, saying I’d rather be elsewhere,” she finished off with another chuckle.
“We’re here to help each other, I suppose,” mused Sepp. “We’ll help you get there. You should be with family, especially after this…”
“You know, any of you are free to come, too. Could be for the best, I know Baletor is a longer ways off than Lundermark but, hey, it could be five people who know each other in a new place rather than four.”
“Four refugees turning up on your cousin’s doorstep?” Sepp said it with half a smile.
“Fellow travellers! Serpent’s Breath, I think we’ll have earned that title by then.” Sepp couldn’t help but laugh. She was certainly right.
“Hey, you don’t have any family in Silverden or anything, no? Elsewhere?”
“Oh, ah, no, not really. Not that I know of anyway. My parents died when I was a boy, if I have family elsewhere, they never learned of it and I never knew them. Or they didn’t want to deal with it, who knows. We were pretty far out back home, after all. Northernmost village in the Veneracy. I’d rather be with people from home anyway.”
“Well, we’ll certainly be together for a while,” Seva said with a pat on Sepp’s shoulder.
A healthy little fire crackled in an expertly crafted fire pit. Seva had packed a tin pot, saying it had been her best friend on the road before. Probably the best thing you could bring besides a knife, and Skivor assented with a grunt and nod. Drinking water was filled with the mushrooms and herbs, and Sepp was asked if he had anything in those packs to add. He laughed it off as Seva pulled something else out.
“And this…” she said with a wry tone, “is one of those little treats I was talking about.” She had actually packed seasoning, and was now sprinkling some in as the pot was stirred. Barosh blessed her for it. They still had their bowls from the other night, and some instinct had mercifully told the four to keep them handy. After it had cooked, Seva divvied up the pot. The small amount left could be reheated easily. It was as primitive as a cooked meal could get without being meat on a spit, but it was welcome.
“So, uh, I was thinking,” Barosh announced.
“What?” came Skivor’s blunt reply.
“What exactly are we going to tell people when we get to town first...and then the rest of the group turns up? Wouldn’t that look a little odd or something?”
“We can just say we got separated or something,” said Sepp. That seemed fair to everyone.
“Aye, well, don’t offer anything either,” said Skivor as he slurped down his stew.
They sat under the canopy of a light, wide spread of trees. The land out here was a little flatter, though no less wild. Barosh was seeing to the fire while Sepp and Seva packed. Barosh was telling amusing tales from the farm, dwelling on better times he said, but Sepp suspected it was to make Seva laugh, though he also learned that the farm Barosh spent most time working at definitely was one Sepp made a few deliveries to. And they had been hexes, but he didn’t mention that. There was a good chance they’d actually met before, if only briefly. Skivor, meanwhile, had been out a little ways looking for walkable terrain going forward. Seva went to go see if he was coming back when suddenly he stumbled into the camp, breathing hard, and looking around. He had his axe out, gripped tight.
“Get behind me, now.” He said every word slow and with deliberation. They couldn’t even form the question in their mouths before they saw it. It was a human figure, but the body had great growths of shagginess about the shoulders and waist, it was barrel-chested, and with limbs thick like tree boughs. The skin was a dirty paleness. The fingers and toes, as best could be seen, ended not in nails, they ended in claws. But the head was not human. In place of one, there was the head of what might be a goat, or ram, larger than normal. It huffed and snorted as it approached, back hunched and fingers flexing. A beastman. It had probably smelled the stew. They were one of the things Búcher had warned a younger Sepp about on their first trip out to collect medicine and poison. They weren’t really animals, or people, he had said. They weren’t really flesh, not in the way people were. But they weren’t spirits, either, bound to something. They sort of just appeared in wild places, as if springing from the trees, or the earth, or the air between them. Elemental was the word he had used. And, Sepp knew, they never appeared alone.
Skivor was talking to it, telling it back away in a low, gruff tone full of fear. He didn’t blame the woodsman, beastmen were one of the worst things a person could encounter alone out in the wilderness, and woodsmen knew to fear them. They came in many different flavours, too, and not all hostile. Some were apparently downright docile and even intelligent, if stories about bovine-headed or wolf-headed specimens were true. But more often than not, they acted like beasts, and groups of goatheads were a scourge on small, isolated settlements. They tended to be led by horse-headed ones colloquially known as capalheads, the origin of the name lost to time, but one whose potency was never lost. They were unequivocally cruel creatures, not merely bestial and violent, but cruel. Everyone there was praying in their minds that no such thing would show itself.
The beastman was coming far too close to Skivor to for comfort. It was sizing him up. Sepp’s eyes were darting around, looking, waiting.
“I am warning you, go away,” Skivor intoned as he held back his axe, the sound of his voice more important than the words. The goathead didn’t seem to care. It suddenly made a kind of jump, almost as if to scare the woodsman, but he interpreted it as a lunge. Skivor gave a short, fast chop with his axe as he jumped back with a cry, the beastman taking it on its arm. A sound came from its throat that was neither human nor animal, and it staggered back several steps. Several more goatheads came from behind bushes and thicker trees, some half-loping on all fours before standing back up. A guttural croak came from the wounded beastman, and it went for Skivor, who met it with a longer, heavier strike on the upper arm. Its claws barely missed him. It howled, and the others, who were forming a semi-circle, began braying, whipping themselves up.
There was no way they could fight these things off. Not even Barosh, who had picked up a fallen branch as a club, a decently tough fellow, could handle them with Skivor. And then Sepp felt it, down at his side. Hexes. There was a gallop to a full stop in his chest as his brain raced through every thought imaginable. He looked to the people around him. And then an image of his father bleeding out in the dirt flashed into his mind. He looked back to his people. Without thinking any further, Sepp pushed his own pack aside and opened he flap on Búcher’s. He pushed past the grimoire and reached down into the bottles of toxins. He flicked through the tied on labels of each one. There was some pretty nasty stuff in here. Perfect, he thought. Each hex had tied to it as well a nullifying bloom. A hex was two parts: poison and bloom. One doesn’t work without the other. Most blooms were variations on each other, additions or subtractions that changed the meaning of the symbol. Nullifying blooms were quite easy to reverse if you knew what to remove. One wrong stroke on a bloom could lead to disaster or uselessness. Sepp had an intimate knowledge of them.
He picked out a black vial with a thick solution within, and strode forth.
“Everybody move back! Move back!” He wildly gestured with his free hand.
“What are you doing?” growled Skivor, grabbing Sepp’s arm, but Sepp ignored him. He held the hex in front of himself. The wounded beastman locked eyes with him. He wet his thumb with his tongue and quickly wiped off a stroke of the bloom, throwing it forward onto the ground.
“Back! Get back, come on!” shouted Sepp as he took several long strides away from what he’d cast down. The beastman immediately recoiled as if a wave suddenly came over it. The others, who had been edging forth, didn’t even get a chance to inspect the hex. They were falling over themselves to get away, movements slowing more and more by the second. The sounds escaping their throats were indescribable. Sepp was grabbing more vials from the pack, wiping off strokes, and shoving them into the others’ hands as he pushed them back. He stood and stared towards where the beastmen were feebly escaping to. He swore he could be almost see them melting back into the trees, or the earth, or the air.
They all stood silently for a moment. All eyes were on Sepp, who slowly turned around, the realization of what he’d done hitting him like a charging bull. Skivor, who’d been looking down at the little bottle in his hand, gazed up.
“So. This is what that old Voerlunder was cooking up in his back room, eh?” he said. He let the bottle drop to the ground. A rush of anger came over Sepp, who forced himself to stay in place. Barosh looked at the vial in his hand, then around to the others. Seva walked over.
“Sepp, is this…?”
“Yeah. It is.” He could feel a tremor pass through him as he spoke.
“Poisons.” Skivor almost sounded like he was spitting.
“What else could we do?” Sepp turned to the woodsman with a furrowed brow. “Think you’re good enough to hack those things to bits before a capalhead or worse turned up?!” Seva and Barosh’s eyes went wide. Skivor just raised a brow.
“Byoosher was a hexman?” asked Barosh.
“Yeah. He learned it from the Turasach way up north years ago. Brewed stuff for the whole village, as did I. Our work’s under most houses I’d reckon. You’ll buy it but you won’t admit it,” Sepp said as he looked at Skivor.
“I aint never bought bought a poison. Don’t condone it,” said the woodsman. “But you’ve stones to talk to a man with an axe like that, lad.” There was a tense second before Skivor wiped the blade off on his leg and replaced it in its sheathe.
“I don’t know how I feel about this stuff, but...well, you did save our skins, Sepp,” Seva ended with a nervous laugh.
“Weird stuff, but, I don’t know, the old farmer never seemed to care so...fine by me,” Barosh said, still unsure.
“We ready to go then?” Skivor sounded impatient.
“You’d better keep that bottle in your hand I gave you or you’ll end up like those beastmen. I’m keeping the hex with us until we’re out of these woods.” Skivor grunted but acquiesced.
“What’s in these ones anyway?” asked Barosh.
“Poison. It’s all poisons. Stronger stuff than what’s on the ground there. But that’s how it works.” Sepp bent down and picked up the vial he’d cast at the beastmen.
“Poison fights poison.”
Another great read! The beastmen are rather creepy and interestingly portrayed! I love the lore weaved into this story!
I'm looking forward to this next installment!