The Great Darkening (Epic of Haven Trilogy) (9 page)

With that the two men mounted their tired, old nags and galloped away, leaving Cal in the middle of the sea of stumps, horse-less, flint-less and without any supplies to aid him in his journey.

Cal surveyed his surroundings; his countenance was a bit stunned from all that had just unfolded in the last few moments and the swiftness with which it had all occurred. As he pushed away the bleak thoughts of hopelessness, violent ones began to take their place, flooding his mind with anger at the cursed Oweles. “It’s your fault that I am even in this mess in the first place!” he screamed into the empty, grey sky. “And now this! Now I have to walk the whole way! I don’t even know where I’m going!” His words were born of extreme frustration, colored with the toxic hues of defeat. All he could do now was walk alone and ponder what he would do if he could ever get his hands around one of their feathered Owele necks.

As he attempted to soothe the pain of the loss with thoughts of revenge, the sounds of the treeless forest began to eerily play out melodies that hinted of all the other dangers awaiting him if he did not make it to the cutter camp soon. So, without his companion and without his supplies, Cal put one foot in front of the other and began to make his way into the cold North on his own.

Chapter Ten

T
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cooler weather of the northern territory began to cut through the thin fabrics that Cal had worn for this journey, but it was not the chilly bite of the north air that had turned Cal’s blood cold. No, weather cannot possibly have the same kind of effect on a man. That kind of cold comes from one place and one place alone. Fear.

Cal had been walking for what must have been close to half a day when, by the faded silver light of evening, he reached a deserted forest village. Since before the great walled city of Haven was constructed, people had made refuges and homes, small villages and holds, all throughout the forestlands at the base of the Hilgari. The ground was fertile, the trees were strong, and the mountains provided a buffer from the harsh winds of the great North.

It was a chilling sight to behold as Cal walked into a village that once teemed with life but was now utterly void of it. The small houses, the granaries, the mill, and even the sheep pens stood completely still in their abandonment. Aside from the strong gusts of wind and the creaking of aged and forgotten clapboards, this long-abandoned settlement stood eerily silent and still.

Cal couldn’t help but wonder what could have caused such total desertion. People who had worked their whole lives to carve out a living here in the forestlands, generations of families who had lived and died in these homes, were all simply gone.

Surely they wouldn’t have up and left this place just because the tree is dying,
he thought to himself.

Cal stood alone amidst the lonely stone structures that made up the vacated village. He looked all around, scanning from one horizon to the next. He could not detect even a single sign of life, save the weeds that were reclaiming the gardens and the ivy that climbed the walls.

The forest was gone. Dead stumps encircled the village like grave markers while the cold wind, no longer buffered by the trees, howled in between the buildings.

There is an inescapable fear that often seems to accompany the revelation that one is the only living thing in sight. Cal did his best to shake off the foreboding disquiet, but he couldn’t keep himself from wondering whether or not there was a more sinister reason than just the absence of trees and the fading of light to cause all of this. He had always favored hope, believed in the return of the King and the finding of a new light, but this stark encounter with the harsh reality of the North pulled the unfamiliar strings of doubt and dread in his uneasy heart.

It had been too long since Cal had rested, not since that fateful nap by the stream, and he was in need of shelter and sleep and something warm to fill his belly and renew his strength. He wore nothing but the thin fabrics on his back, so he reluctantly began to inspect the abandoned houses in search of food and supplies. At the very least, perhaps he could find a safe spot to close his eyes for a while.

The first couple of houses seemed picked clean, for no jars of food or barrels of ale were in sight. Not even a scraping’s worth of wheat flour or dried fish could be found in any of the cupboards. The small sheep pen looked as if it hadn’t been home to livestock for months, and Cal began to grow worried that food and supplies were not going to be so easy to come by.

He made a careful exploration of the abandoned village, searching through each empty house as he came upon them, but as he rounded the side of the next house, a twinge of foreboding shot up his spine.

Up until now, all he could hear was the voice of the wind and the eerie, silent still of this dead place. But here, close to the center of the abandoned village, he realized that there was a humming, a minor note in this quiet chord, a constant vibrating drone that seemed to be emanating from somewhere within the granary.

Cal quickly looked to see if, in fact, he was still alone in the village, all the more determined to stay vigilant and not to be taken unawares for a second time. When he was certain that there were no thieves lurking in the shadows or highwaymen ready to assail him, he turned to focus his attention on the strange sound coming from the middle of the village.

Cal’s heart pulsated with a rhythm that felt a lot like fear, and his feet moved in slow motion, one hesitant foot in front of the other. The closer he came to the old, abandoned granary, the more distinct the sound became. The wind howled and the clapboard homes creaked against their stone hearths as the unnerving sound of the unnatural, low-pitched humming grew louder with each cautious step he took.

At first he thought it could have just been the sound of the wind moving the tattered sails of the village mill, but this sound was constant and growing and did not sound much like a wind-whipped canvas.

Cal’s hand grabbed the rough wooden handle at the door of the buzzing granary. He took a nervous breath, steeling himself for whatever mysteries or monsters might be waiting for him just beyond this dilapidated barrier, then slowly he pulled the door open.

Inch by creaking inch the door eased outward and the sound of the humming grew. Then, as if lightning had struck, the door burst fully open and an angry black cloud rushed out the granary door, sending him reeling in both fear and disgust. Cal screamed as the mysterious cloud engulfed him in rhythmic fury. He opened his mouth in protest, but it began to fill with the vile, disgusting source of all the buzzing commotion.

“Damnable flies!” he yelled and then spat in disgust.

He fell on his back and swatted at his face, trying to avoid becoming the next meal of this black horde. The flies buzzed angrily, swirling around his head in a mad storm. A few of the beastly ones bit and stung at the neck of the young groomsman, causing red, angry welts to surface on his tanned skin before he was able to smack them away.

When the black cloud of wretched flies had finally dispersed and his breathing resumed, Cal surveyed the damage and spat a few more times to rid his mouth of the putrid taste. When a few nervous moments had passed, his heartbeat slowed back down to a normal speed, and so he rose tentatively to his feet and began to dust himself off.

He could no longer see or hear any signs or sounds of the buzzing swarm. When he determined he was safe, or at least safe enough, he turned his attention to the dark interior of the village’s granary. Six black arrows fletched with raven’s feathers stuck out of a pair of rotting corpses that Cal could only guess were once residents of this village. The bodies were large, most likely men. By the looks of what was left of them, they must have been in the granary for quite some time. The stench was overwhelming, and Cal couldn’t help but wretch, losing what little food he had left from the tavern.

Shameus was right. There are evil things that once only happened in the shadows, now done out in the open.

Pity came over him, and even though he knew neither this village nor its lost residents, he determined that something must be done for them. Cal had always been taught that life was a gift from the THREE who is SEVEN; this senseless butchery seemed a blasphemous, wasteful defilement of that gift.

The weariness from the long day of traveling on foot combined with the emotional toll of losing Dreamer and finding the rotting villagers had taken Cal to the brink of exhaustion. And yet, it is quite remarkable what can happen to one’s tired will when something moves one’s heart. At this moment, in the abandoned village, staring at the remains of these arrow-pierced men, it was both the need for justice and a vengeful compassion that gave him a fresh wind of renewed strength.

“Disregarded souls cannot just go unattended to,” he said defiantly to the darkness.

And so Cal braved the stench and felt his way through the stale, putrid air of the dark granary until he came across a spade large enough for him to dig into the cold, hard earth. For what seemed to him like an eternity, and despite his empty stomach and fatigue, Cal labored and dug as he worked to make a hole big enough to bury the two men.

Although his mission of righting this brash injustice prodded him onward, the task was enough to make Cal’s skin crawl. Apart from the smell, he knew that he would eventually have to touch the two corpses, and he wasn’t sure his stomach or his nerves could handle the feel of rotting flesh in his hands.

When the hole finally seemed big enough, Cal went about the dreadful business of dragging the bodies to it. He grabbed the first man, and as he did his eyes got a good look at the black, raven’s feathered arrows that riddled the decaying body.

He had seen these before, hadn’t he?

Of course! These are the same arrows that killed the soldier from the scouting party; the one who died the very same day the Owele came and ruined everything.

The excitement of connecting the two moments was quickly overshadowed with the realization that something deadly, something not seen before, was wantonly killing men.

Cal couldn’t understand the reason for such an assault on this village. Like most of the people at the Western Gate that day, he assumed the attack on the riders was from some desperate outliers, panicked people trying to get closer to the light.
But why would they kill their own? This makes no sense.

Cal was making his way back with the second body when he heard the sound of hooves on earth off in the distance. He froze, listening intently, trying to determine where they were coming from and whether or not they were friend or foe.

“You there!” someone barked from behind him. “What have you done to those men?” the voice asked with an angry bite.

Cal slowly turned around, afraid he might find a raven-fletched arrow fitted to the drawn bow of the man who had just sneaked up on him. As he peered at the rider illuminated by the light of the torch he held, he saw that there was indeed no bow, nor raven feathers of any kind, and Cal breathed a sigh of relief.

“I was looking for a place to make my rest when I came across these two men,” Cal pleaded to the man with the torch.

“So you shot them?” The rider moved closer, gathering his torch and reins in one hand as his other moved towards his sheathed blade.

“No, of course not, no. I didn’t shoot them, they were already dead … look at them!” Cal blurted out, desperation in his voice. “They have been dead for quite some time now! I didn’t do this to them!”

The rider looked more closely at the two dead men, then back at Cal.

“I speak the truth here, sir! I came upon them, left for dead and riddled with these black arrows, and I was doing my best to … I don’t know,” he said, weariness taking the fight out of his words, “right this wrong, I suppose.”

“And just why would some soft-handed city dweller think it was his duty to ‘right the wrong’, as you say?” the rider asked him, suspicion written plainly on his shadowed face.

Cal turned back to look into the grave he had just dug. He considered the corpses for a quietly intense moment, then plopped himself to the ground in a heap of exhaustion before he answered this stranger. “We were made by love, at least that is what I have always believed.” Cal hung his head in fatigue. “Even if it is hate that robs men of our life blood, can’t love at least return at the end of pain and … I don’t know … bring peace somehow?”

The rider took a good, long look at this dirt-covered young man and he relaxed a bit, softening his face towards Cal. “What brings you to this God-forsaken place in this damnable darkness?”

With weariness in his face, Cal looked the rider in the eyes, then turned northward and told him his tale.

The rider listened intently to him. While he spoke, the sounds of other horses coming up from the east began to fill the quiet abandonment of this discarded place with the noise of life once again. Cal could see the glow from their torches making its way up the nearby road. Though he knew these men were not the same men who had killed the villagers, he was not so sure he had found himself in friendly company.

“Well, young righter of wrongs,” said the man with the torch as he shook his head with a curious smirk, “not too many people would make up a story like that. Trust me when I say that no one wants to willingly find himself in the service of the woodcutters.” The rider dismounted his horse and made his way over to the hole that Cal had dug out.

The light from his flickering torch confirmed Cal’s account of the dead men, and he drew back as he inhaled the reek of festering death. The rider saw the raven-feathered arrows that brought these men their demise, and as he examined their rotting bodies, a knowing look crossed his face.

“Do you know who those belong to?” Cal asked, pointing to the black arrows, “and what cause they would have to kill these men?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t know their owners, but I have seen the kind of death that they bring.”

Cal was hoping for some kind of further explanation, but the rider pointed to the other dead man, suggesting that they finish what had already been started. He and Cal carefully, and much more respectfully now that there were two sets of hands to aid in the lifting, grabbed the body and laid him in the grave.

“These men are cursed,” he said matter-of-factly. “This whole God-forsaken place is cursed. Nothing but death and curses comes from the feathers of such carrion fowl.” He closely examined one of the fallen arrows, turning it over in his fingers.