These Old Bones

18-2

By morning, the rain had passed them by, leaving only the remaining water dripping from leaves and branches. The abandoned children of the storm. Neither Brorzjav nor the girl had the heart to practice, though they did. Going through the patterns in listless fashion, trying and failing to get the girl to perform anything more than a sad push of the air with her magic.

By mid-day they passed another empty fishing hamlet and soon caught up with a string of refugees, carrying all they could hold, heading in the same direction. All walking in a solemn, silent procession. Only the sounds of children crying heard among the shuffling people.

"I don't understand this, Grey." Tiera whispered as they passed bowed heads and fearful glances. "Why slaughter the first hamlet, yet not attack any others?"

"Aye. It has a feeling of wrangling sheep to a corral." He looked at the people as he passed them by until he saw one with a defiant set chin. "You there! What made you leave your homes? Word of the dead? A runner?"

"Sails." Brorzjav raised his eyebrow to the man, expecting more. "We heard of the massacre at Okirit and no sooner did we hear, than the sails appeared. A dozen, at least, laid to anchor not four hundred yards from the beach. We knew we were next."

"Just at anchor? No attack?" The man shook his head towards Tiera's question and continued to walk. Tiera pulled Brorzjav aside. "You're right. They're being herded. What do we do?"

"Nowt we can do. It's not our war." He watched as the line of people continued to trudge onwards. "Is there a way past this city? Around it?"

"I don't know. I told you, I've never been here. My people sent warriors from time-to-time, to protect the city, but I was never part of it." Tiera put her arm around the girl's shoulder as she watched the people walking away. "I never knew the raiders from the Gaerad Islands were so bold."

"I think we should still go to the city." The girl broke in to the conversation. Brorzjav didn't think the girl had a voice in the matter, but she had a look in those ice cold eyes.

"Why?" Not that he'd take advice from a child, he wondered what would make the girl want to enter a city that would, most like, be under attack soon. If it wasn't already.

"I don't know. I just have this feeling we should go to the city." She had a faraway look in her eye and then switched her attention between Tiera and Brorzjav. "It's like when I knew I had to go to the Temple Valley with the Priestesses."

"Bloody Patrons! Sticking their noses in again!" Now that the girl mentioned it, he too had the feeling they should enter the city. A familiar feeling from his dream while dying. "Well, I'm not at the beck and call of anyone. We'll see how goes the journey. If there's a way around, we'll go around."

"You're saying the Eternal Mother wants you to go into the city? A Patron? Talking to you?" Tiera hissed the words, even though the last of the people of the hamlets had passed them by. "That's crazy! Patrons don't talk to ordinary people!"

"Aye, well, I wish you'd tell this bugger that!" Brorzjav adjusted the straps on his backpack and turned to follow the trail of refugees. "I'll not be dictated to by some invisible pretend-god. We're going this way, anyway, but we go around if we can."

The displaced people of the hamlets followed a trail that moved into the trees, away from the shingled beach and the three of them followed. After a while, Brorzjav understood why the trail went inland, as they began climbing a slope upwards until, at the top, he looked back towards the sea, below, and sheer cliffs dropping into choppy waves crashing against them.

The trail continued to move inland, rising and falling with the contours of the land, and he thought they might even become forced to reenter the long spread of the Hissing Marshes. He saw, at the top of one rise, the mist covered twisting trees in the middle distance. The last thing he wanted was to go back into that foul area. Not even to see Irimik again.