Col Buchanan - Stands a Shadow

It began to rain as he made his way towards the heart of the city. Life seemed to be carrying on as normal beneath the distant crash of artillery fire, though the atmosphere was more tense than before, more agitated. Several times he passed someone shouting in anger with their tempers unravelling.

With money from his purse he bought a paper bowl of rice from a street vendor, and was wolfing it down even as he turned away. He walked on through the Quarter of Guilds then through the Quarter of Barbers, coming out at last into the wide thoroughfare that was the Avenue of Lies. The street was less busy than usual. People scurried by under their paper umbrellas or sheltered beneath the dripping eaves of buildings, glumly watching the covered carts that passed, carrying wounded soldiers, and dead ones.

From a small bazaar, Ash purchased an oiled longcoat and a wide-brimmed hat woven of grasses, which curved all the way down to the level of his eyes. Properly garbed against the weather, he next sought out an apothecary, for the air had grown heavy with the press of clouds, and in turn it had brought a return of his head pains. He heard the relief in his own voice as he bought a fresh supply of dulce leaves from a pair of brothers in their little shop in a narrow side street, interrupting them in the midst of a quarrel. Stepping out of the place he stuffed one of the leaves into his mouth. He tasted the bitterness of it, and chewed some more while the pain refused to diminish. Ash took four more of the leaves before his head began to lighten, not dwelling on what that might mean.

Ahead, through the mists of rain, he saw the Mount of Truth rising up above the flat roofs of the district. He turned away from the sight, heading into the alleyways of the Bardello, the little enclave of musicians and poets and artists, finally stopping outside a wooden building that leaned out badly over the cobbled street, its windows shuttered and dark. A metal bracket was fixed over the door, where a wooden sign should have been hanging, sporting the picture of a seal on a neck-chain.

Ash looked about him to make sure he was in the right street. Mystified, he tried the door and found that it was locked.

‘Hermes!’ he shouted out and pounded his fist against it.

After a moment he heard feet shuffling and the sounds of bolts being drawn back. The door tugged open, and Hermes the agent poked his head around and squinted up at him through a thick pair of spectacles.

‘Ash!’ hollered the tiny man with his eyes widening in surprise.

‘You old dog! Is it really you?’ And he opened the door further and beckoned him inside.

‘What is left of me,’ Ash replied. He stepped into the dim dusty space of an empty room, a few chairs arranged around the walls beneath sketches of the bay. Birds were squawking loudly from the neighbouring rooms. ‘What is going on here? Why are you closed for business?’

The man looked up as though he had just been struck across his face, blood flushing to his round cheeks. His eyes blinked and watered behind the glass of his spectacles. He cleared his throat, wiped a strand of curly hair from his forehead. ‘You mean… you don’t know?’

‘Know what?’

Hermes wrung his hands in some distress. Ash didn’t like how the agent was staring at him; as though Hermes was staring at the ghost of a dead man who had not yet been told he was dead.

‘Come,’ Hermes said gently – much too gently – and led Ash by the arm towards the inner door. ‘You should sit down first. Let us go and sit by the fire, shall we?’

Hermes liked birds more than people, and every room of the house seemed filled with cages of the screeching, flapping creatures. Ash sneezed more than a few times as he listened to what the agent had to tell him. His hands gripped the arms of the chair ever harder as he listened. Hermes sat opposite, in his own armchair specially crafted for his small frame, the light of the fire washing over him. Despite the heat, Ash felt chilled to the bone.

He still could barely believe it.

‘I wasn’t certain what was happening at first,’ the agent was telling him. ‘I was waiting for a batch of fresh seals to be sent, but nothing came through. No seals, no carrier birds, no letters. After a while I sent a letter to Cheem myself, through one of the usual blockade runners that we use. Still I heard nothing from Sato. That’s when I truly began to worry.’

He paused to take his spectacles off, to wipe his eyes.

Gone, Ash was thinking. All gone.

‘Last week, I finally received a letter. It was from Baracha. He told me to cease business until I heard from him further. He wrote that Sato had been attacked by the Imperials, that they had put it to the torch. Killed all they found there. Apparently he was away at the time. When he returned he found everything in ruins. That’s what he said, Ash. That’s how he put it. In ruins.’

‘Survivors?’ Ash heard his distant, impossibly calm voice ask in reply.

‘He didn’t say. I don’t think so. Osho, though… he said that that Osho had been slain in the fighting.’

Ash closed his eyes, while all around him the birds called out and rattled around in their cages.

Che, he thought. They used what he knew to find us.

For the longest of times he could not move, could not even speak.

Bilge Town

The forest was a world within a world, his mother, the Contrare, had liked to say.

As he staggered into its outer treeline, dripping wet from his river crossing and with the rags hanging off him, he sensed the difference in the air, the change of scents in his nostrils, the softening of light as it fell through the high canopy, and realized that it was true.

He ventured onwards, deeper into the Windrush until his legs would carry him no further. He collapsed onto the soft floor of leaves and dirt and slept a dreamless sleep of oblivion.

When he awoke, Bull knew he could go no further without first regaining some strength. He set about making a camp for himself not far from the trickles of a wide, shallow stream. He burned dead-wood that was wet and smoky, moved a large log in front of it for a seat. For food he ate berries and caught what fish he could with a sharpened stick, even chanced the mushrooms that looked familiar enough to his city eyes. Nuts too, of all kinds, were in abundance, though they lay heavy in his stomach if he consumed too many.

When he fell asleep those first nights on a carpet of soft moss, with the stars shining through the leaves overhead, and the trees surrounding him like the walls of a home, he knew the world beyond the forest was diminishing in his mind, its troubles and conflicts no longer his own. He was at peace at last in this quiet, lonely place of his mother’s people. He wished never to leave it.

On the fourth morning of his convalescence, Bull was wakened by a sharp stab to his side, and he sat up to find a group of male Contrare gaping down at him. Warriors, by the looks of their painted faces, striped green and black from ear to ear, and the crow feathers and bone charms adorning their long dark hair.

‘ Chushon! Tekanari!’ One of the men demanded as he jabbed his spear at him again. The warrior seemed the youngest of them all.

Bull grabbed the shaft of it and plucked it out of his grip.

At once, a dozen spear-tips were pressing against his flesh.

‘Whoah,’ Bull told them as he held up a hand. He tossed the spear back into the hand of the startled warrior.

‘Calm down. I’m one of you, see?’ And he gestured to his face as though it was obvious.

The men glanced at the young warrior. They wanted to kill Bull here and now, he could see.

With graceful movements the young warrior planted the end of his spear in the earth and plucked at the knees of his trousers to bend down before him. Tentatively, he grasped Bull’s face and turned it one way and then the other. He studied the sharpness of his cheeks, the swarthy complexion of his skin. He peered closely at the horns tattooed on his temples, and nodded his head in appreciation.