Marc of Ashes

Untitled Part 1

Chapter One: A Glassy Grave

Marc could barely recognize the frozen faces of the men riding next to him. It was so cold he could feel his own thoughts freezing before he barely got them out. On his left was a white face of death he believed to be Jon of Eton, a farm boy who has done watch duty with back home. To the right was a man he had known only as Bull, and only from his fists. He had to squint through the flurries that played among them to make out Bull's features. Everything was turning white. Everything was slowly freezing. They had been on this campaign for over a hundred days and the last twenty in this north land where the sun itself was afraid to come out.

It was a crusade for Christianity that brought these men, Marc among them, to this frozen wasteland, and if god was everywhere, this was surely that part of God which was numb.

The horses fell forward one step at a time and it was only the rocking saddles that showed any life in the men. If it weren't for the rocking, they would have all froze to death by now. Snow clotted around their beards and each lung of warmed air stumbled out of their mouths in short cloudy snorts. The horses were no better.

Jon's eyes seemed fixed on a distance that was no longer there. The falling snow made the whole world only as big as a stone's throw. Bull seemed to be sleeping, frozen into a slump of a giant. Marc remembered first meeting Bull one night a long time ago, even longer now since they left the town where he served as constable. It was festival time and Bull was drunker than three lords and it was Marc's misbegotten duty to talk sense into the man. Bull was a rough hand new to city life, and festivals were like honey to his craziness. Townsfolk brought the complaint of a man leaning out of the upstairs window of a tavern, dangling half dressed women in each hand and offering them to the passersby below. Someone had to do something, they told him.

He winced again, just as he had done when the citizens had told him about Bull dangling women by their slowly tearing dresses.

Marc started in his saddle. He had felt another thought freeze like cracking ice. He looked around again just to remind himself that he wasn't all alone at the end of the earth, or that his horse had lumbered off the end of the earth and into some Viking myth land. He looked as far as he could into the sheets of snow falling silently ahead, looking for goddesses who would announce the end o their journey, the end of their wordily lives.

Nothing but the emptiness that cold air inhabits.

He looked to Jon again who saw the same thing as he was seeing hours ago. Days ago. He strained in his saddle to look further, the joints of his armor creaking, and ice in small patches breaking loose where he could twist at the waist and shoulder, where he could stretch a limb or rekindle a muscle. He vaunted somewhat from the horse's back, craning to see further into the snow as if height could part the falling flakes. He was looking down the line of men, some slow-moving picket of two hundred such lads as he, all bearing the weight of the weather like men turned to icy silent trolls.

Somewhere along the line was his captain. It would or could be important to know where he was. Captain Spence was the only experienced crusader he knew in this campaign, though he didn't know too many. Captain Spence had recruited him from his small village, his only qualification being the local constable. He had settled brawls and arrested men and stood guard at fests and walked the streets at night but that was the limit of his experience. His only other qualification, apart from his now freezing Christian heart, was that his village was able to fit him with a suit of armor and admirable weapons. All of which had frozen on him now beneath the blanket he wrapped them with for warmth.

He could not see the captain. He fought with his sleepy mind to make that more important. He could not allow for the captain to be one more thing that froze itself into the featureless landscape. He could not let this captain drift away like his thoughts.