Don Bassingthwaite - The Grieving Tree

In his time, he’d seen many kinds of desolation, in many different places. The Last War had scourged nearly every part of the Five Nations. Only the fringes of the continent, places like the vast forests of the Eldeen Reaches or the thick marshes of the Shadow Marches had remained untouched. To the best of his knowledge, Droaam had also seen little of the Last War, yet the barrens had the same feel as battlefields Geth recalled from Cyre and Karrnath-only much, much older, as if Droaam had been ruined by time rather than by war.

Orshok stared around them in awe, stunned to silence. Because he was bound to the land and nature, Geth guessed, the druid could probably sense things about the barrens that the rest of them couldn’t. When the young orc finally spoke, it was in a whisper. “What happened here?”

Singe shrugged. “Who knows? Ten thousand years ago, this was part of the Empire of Dhakaan. Hobgoblins ruled here until the Daelkyr War. After Dhakaan fell, the barrens lay empty until humans came to Khorvaire. When the Five Nations joined to form the Kingdom of Galifar, Breland was already claiming them as its territory, but its claim was tenuous at best. There have been more attempts to colonize the barrens than anyone could keep track of. Some succeeded and held on-like Vralkek-until Breland abandoned the region during the Last War. Others failed quickly. Some just vanished.” He looked out across the bogs and low hills and drew a deep breath. “Researchers from Wynarn have spent lifetimes trying to pull answers out of this land. Twelve moons, what I wouldn’t give for some of their notebooks right now!”

“You can spend all the time here that you want,” said Natrac with a shudder. He shrank down in his saddle. “That feeling has always made me nervous, like there’s something watching and waiting for its chance to reach out of the past and grab for you. It’s not just here-it’s everywhere in Droaam.”

Geth glanced at Singe and raised an eyebrow. Natrac had just contradicted himself. The wizard’s eyes narrowed and he gave a slight nod. He’d noticed it as well. “Natrac,” said Geth, “when we were walking through Vralkek for the first time, you said you’d always avoided Droaam before this.”

The muscles of the half-orc’s heavy jaw tightened. “I meant that I avoided it whenever I could.”

“But if you can say that the feeling of something watching and waiting is everywhere in Droaam,” said Singe casually, “that must mean you’ve traveled the country fairly extensively.”

“Not that much really,” Natrac said. His voice was strained. “Enough to know I don’t like Droaam.”

“What about Graywall?” Singe asked. “Have you ever been to Graywall?”

Natrac looked at the wizard sharply, his eyes bright and hard, then turned around and stared at the marching ogres ahead of them. “Bava,” he said after a few moments. “Bava told you.”

There was a darkness in his voice, a sort of anger that Geth had never heard from the half-orc before, even when they’d sworn to take vengeance on Vennet for what he’d done. Blustering merchant, grim warrior-abruptly Geth felt like he was seeing a glimpse of a third side of Natrac, something deep and raw. “She didn’t tell us much,” he said. “Only that you’d been born in Graywall and that she’d met you in Sharn. We tried to get her to tell us more but she wouldn’t.”

“She’d already told you too much,” Natrac snarled at him. “Lords of the Host, she promised me-” He shut his mouth tight and rode in silence.

Geth and Singe exchanged glances, then Geth nudged his horse a little closer to the half-orc.

“Natrac,” he said quietly. “We’ve all done things we don’t want to talk about-”

“Like Narath?” asked Natrac.

Hot anger and cold dread mixed in Geth’s gut. “Who told you-?” he began, then caught himself. Natrac stared at him with flat, cool eyes.

“Nobody told me,” the half-orc said. “All I had to do was listen. I remember hearing about the Massacre at Narath. You-and Singe-would have been on the losing side. If you don’t want to talk about something you did there, it must have been bad.”

“It’s nothing that’s going to affect us now,” Geth told him. “It’s over. It’s in the past.”

“So is what I did. You don’t need to worry about it.” Natrac fixed his eyes on a distant grove of trees. “I was born in Graywall, yes. I left it for Sharn-and then I left Sharn for Zarash’ak and a new life. I was gone from Graywall long before Breland abandoned the barrens and I haven’t returned to Droaam since. Does that answer your questions?”

“You said that you’d spent time in an arena, but you weren’t a gladiator,” said Geth. “Does that have anything to do with this?”

Natrac’s eyes flickered, but his lips just pressed together until they were almost white around his protruding tusks. He said nothing more.

Geth let his horse drop back to where Singe rode. “What did he say?” the wizard asked.

“It’s nothing we need to worry about,” said Geth.

“Did I hear him mention Narath?”

“It’s nothing we need to worry about,” Geth repeated harshly. He shifted his mount away again, ignoring the flash of anger that crossed Singe’s face.

They rode in uncomfortable silence through the rest of the morning. Around midday, orders rang out, calling a break. The column stopped and the ogres fell out of formation. They sprawled out across the road and onto the firm land on either side of it, gnawing at chunks of unidentifiable meat, resting, and relieving themselves. Geth and the others dismounted as well. In addition to horses, the General had provided water and trail rations suitable for human consumption. They stuck close together as they ate. Disciplined or not, some of Tzaryan’s troops were looking at them with an unpleasant interest.

At the head of the column, a hastily erected pavilion gave shelter from the sun to the General and Dandra. Geth could catch glimpses of the pair through the shifting mass of ogres. Their manners toward each other seemed distant, yet polite. “I wonder how they’re doing?” he said.

Singe stood up from where he had been sitting. “Why don’t we go see?” he suggested. He looked to Orshok, Natrac, and Ashi. “Wait here.”

Chuut, however, stepped out of the crowd and stopped them before they had taken ten paces. “The General says you’re to hold position.”

“We just want to pay our respects to our host,” said Singe, but the ogre was unmoved. Up ahead, Geth saw Dandra glance at them, then lean a little closer to the General. The man seemed to listen to her, then shake his scarf-shrouded head. Dandra looked frustrated, but she turned back to him and Singe, smiled, and gave them a wave.

“I think she’s fine,” the shifter murmured to Singe. He took the wizard’s arm and tugged him back to the others. Chuut followed them for a few paces, escorting them, then left them with a final warning to stay in their place within the column. Singe’s eyes were still on the pavilion, however.

“Twelve bloody moons,” he said. “Is the General going to talk to us at all during this journey?”

“Maybe he doesn’t want too many of us around him at one time?” suggested Ashi. “He might be afraid we would try to overpower him.”

“Maybe,” said Singe, but to Geth’s ears he sounded doubtful.

In the afternoon, the land began to rise until they were riding through rolling hills sparsely covered in tangled trees. The woods were thickets compared to the great forests of the Eldeen, where the growth was sometimes so dense it was impossible to see more than a few feet beyond the edges of a narrow path, but somehow Geth found the open woodlands more unnerving. They had the same feeling of ancient desolation as the lowland bogs, intensified by the shifting shadows among the branches and trunks. The woods were silent as well, probably because the noise of the ogres’ passage along the road hushed any birds or animals nearby, but Geth couldn’t quite shake the feeling that the woods were always quiet, holding the secrets of ages behind tight-sealed lips. When they came around the side of a hill and the sweeping vista of a valley opened before them, he spotted the rounded longhouse and huts of an orc camp on its far side-but couldn’t have guessed at how old the camp was. Nothing moved around the huts and no smoke rose from the longhouse. Its inhabitants might have been in hiding or they might have left a few days previously, or they might have abandoned the camp months or even years before. He asked Orshok what he thought, but by the time the druid had turned to look, the camp had been hidden by leaves once more.