Benjamin Tate - Well of Sorrows

“What is it?” Walter asked.

“It’s one of the previous expeditions,” Tom said, his voice strangely flat and remote. “It’s what’s left of their wagons.”

Shock settled over everyone as they stared out at the abandoned wagons, the words sinking in slowly.

And then Walter spun his horse toward Aeren, who was suddenly surrounded by Eraeth and the other Alvritshai who had emerged from the forest as they approached. Their bows were strung and pulled, arrows steady, although Colin didn’t know when they’d strung them. They were pointed toward his father, toward Arten and Walter, the commander’s hand already on his sword. But when he saw the arrows trained on him, he froze, eyes blazing.

“Who did this?” Walter spat, not in a roar but in a hiss. He kicked his horse forward a menacing step, completely ignoring Aeren’s guards. “Who did this?” he demanded again. “Did you do this? Did you?”

“Don’t be stupid, Walter.”

Colin felt a hot surge of satisfaction pierce the coldness of the fear in his chest at his father’s voice, flat and even.

Walter spun on Tom. “What did you say to me?”

“I said, don’t be stupid. They wouldn’t have led us here to see this if they’d done it themselves. They would have killed us back where we met. So sit down and keep quiet, before you get us all killed.”

“Yes, Walter,” Jackson added, looking pointedly toward Aeren’s guards. “Sit down and shut up.”

Walter stiffened, his glare never leaving Tom’s face, but he sat back in the saddle. The muscles in his jaw flexed. “I’m the Proprietor here,” he insisted, his tone sullen.

Tom’s eyes darkened. “Then act like it.” Without waiting for a response, he turned to Arten. “We need to check out those wagons, see if we can determine what happened.”

“What about them?” Arten asked, nodding toward the Alvritshai. Aeren stood in their midst, his bow the only one not strung. He watched everyone in the group carefully, all trace of the smiling man they’d spent the day traveling and trading languages with gone. His guardsmen had not relaxed, not even when Walter backed down, and Arten’s hand had not shifted from his sword hilt.

“I don’t think we have to worry about them.” Tom turned his attention on Aeren. “We’re going down there,” he said, motioning toward the wagons.

Aeren nodded, said something in his own language. His guards relaxed, their bows dropping, some of the tension in their strings easing. But they did not remove the arrows; they kept them pointed toward the ground, ready for use.

Arten waited until everyone else had headed toward the wagons, Walter making a point of riding out in front first, before easing away from the Alvritshai and following.

The first thing Colin noticed as he and Karen approached the wagons was that they were nothing but burned out husks. Charred wood stood out against the green and yellow of the grasses, pieces torn from the sides of the wagon completely overgrown by the grass itself. Karen’s hand found his as they came up on the first wagon, the rest of the group spreading out, Arten and Tom heading toward the center of the grouping, Walter and Jackson circling around to the other side. The wagons were spaced as if they’d been hit while traveling.

“What do you think happened?” Karen said, as she reached out a tentative hand toward the side of the wagon, brushed her fingers against the charred wood. Her hand came away black with soot, cinders crumbling off and falling to the ground, flakes catching in the breeze and drifting away.

“They were hit while moving,” Colin said. “It looks like they were trying to run away. Look at the wheel. It’s shattered, like when the horses bolted on the lower plains and Paul’s wagon hit the stone and flipped.” He pointed toward the broken wheel, the wagon canted in that direction. The smell of char and soot was strong, even though the wagons had been sitting out exposed for what must have been months.

Colin stood, glanced into the back of the wagon as Karen drifted away, noticed that most of the supplies were still inside, although charred almost beyond recognition. Something might be salvageable though. The hide cover was gone, although a few of the supports that had held it still remained, also blackened by fire.

“Oh, Diermani help us,” Karen gasped, her breath choked.

He circled around toward the front of the wagon, toward Karen. “What is it?” he asked as he approached and saw Karen looking at the ground. Her hand covered her mouth as she took shallow breaths.

And then the breeze shifted and he caught the rancid smell of rotten meat. He gagged, even though it wasn’t that strong, one hand covering his own mouth.

“The horses,” Karen said, voice thin.

The team of horses that had pulled the wagon lay in the grass, hidden by its stalks. They were still tied to the tongue, their bodies half cooked by the fire. The blackened skin had pulled away, exposing their yellowed teeth, and holes gaped in their sides where animals had gnawed at their hides, chunks of flesh torn free. But they’d been on the plains for a while, the rancid smell more a lingering memory, the bodies themselves more gruesome than anything else.

Colin sucked in a breath to steady himself, then crouched down close to the dead horse to look it over closely. “Get me a stick,” he said.

“From where?” Karen said, moving away.

“The line of trees over the river if you have to.”

Karen snorted. He heard her rooting through the back of the wagon, then return.

“What about this?”

She held out the end of a hoe, the metal and part of the handle still intact. The top of the handle had been burned to ash.

He grunted, grabbed the end of the handle, greasy soot coating his hand, then used the metal part of the hoe to prod something from the flaking hide of the horse. It took a moment to work it free, but once it fell out, he pulled it toward him, then reached down to pick it up.

Karen leaned forward as he brought it up into the sunlight.

“It’s the head of a spear,” Colin said.

Karen stood up. “So they were attacked, and they tried to run, but-”

“They didn’t make it.”

They considered this in silence, broken a moment later by Karen. “So who attacked them?”

They both turned toward Aeren and the Alvritshai. Uneasiness settled into Colin’s stomach, roiled there.

“Let’s show this to my father,” he said, standing.

They moved toward where his father and Arten were inspecting one of the other wagons. Within twenty steps, he felt something soft give beneath his foot and glanced down.

Karen shrieked and leaped back, but Colin only stared, withdrawing his foot hastily.

He’d stepped on an arm, the impression of his shoe clear in what remained of the man’s flesh. The man’s body was mercifully facedown, a ragged hole in his back where a spear had killed him, then been jerked free. The body was shrunken, the flesh collapsed in upon itself, and like the bodies of the horses, the predators of the plains had been at it. One of the man’s legs was completely missing, torn free and dragged off somewhere to be eaten.

The man had clearly been running from the wagon-abandoned after it had caught fire or when it had hit the stone and the wheel had shattered-and had been killed as he fled.

Colin shuddered, then grabbed Karen’s arm and led her away, although she’d already recovered from the initial shock. They jogged up to where his father and Arten were kneeling down at the back of a second wagon.

“We found a body,” Colin said.

His father looked up. “So have we.” Then he reached down and turned the body on the ground beneath the wagon over.

It wasn’t one of the people from the wagon train. It wasn’t even Andovan. The body was short, perhaps a hand or two shorter than Colin. It would have been stocky-broad of shoulder and chest, with short legs and arms-except that it was as mauled and decomposed as the body Colin and Karen had found. The fact that the face was caved in on one side, crushed by a heavy, blunt object, didn’t help matters. But even so they could see that the man’s skin had been a dusky brown shade, like dirt, and that he’d worn a closely shaven beard, trimmed on the edges, the length bound and twisted into small braids and tied off with beads. His hair was a tawny brown, a few locks braided and tied with beads and small feathers. He wore a shirt of woven cloth, soft where it wasn’t stiff with caked dirt and blood and soot, but his breeches were made of a different material, something tougher than the shirt. He didn’t wear shoes.