The White Tree (59 page)
Perhaps Blays had it right. Let the world turn on its own for a while. It had done so before they were born and it would do so after they were gone. For whatever ills it caused, the ambition of the men within it was no less natural then the nether itself. Whatever it was that drove them to do harm was the same need that compelled them to build sky-scratching cathedrals and castle walls twice as thick as a man was tall, to tramp down the roads that spoked through a thousand miles of farmland and wilderness, to gather in villages and towns and cities in the planet-hugging reach of conquest and commerce; the same need that made them grow mile on mile of wind-ruffled wheat, that made men fill libraries with books and books with words, that made them fill their lungs with air and their stomachs with beer; that peopled a poor woman's home with bright-eyed, soot-streaked children who would one day travel from one coast to another, or launch across the shuddering waves far from sight of land, or die before they knew what surrounded them, or rob an ancient temple in the dead of night and pry its secrets from the rubbly stone.
Trees thrust up around Dante, blotting out the sun. Grass sighed at his ankles and thighs whenever he stepped off the road. Hundreds of pounds of horse rose and fell beneath him. Crows spat at each other in the boughs and were chased away by nattering squirrels. In the undergrowth, mice and rabbits and wolves stirred ankle-deep leaves. Spooked deer caught the boys' scent and crashed away through the brambles. And above them, by day or by night, the wind breathed in the trees. If there had ever been gods in this place, they'd been driven out by the crush of their own creations a long time ago. Arawn, he knew, had not been at the Tree. The
Cycle of Arawn
had led him through unknown years of man's knowledge. He had thought it would show him its very roots. Instead, in following it to its end, to the endless snowfield beneath the White Tree where he believed he would find a god—an order and a meaning and a hold on this world—he had found himself simply trapped among mad people doing mad things, had killed one friend and been betrayed by another, one more mote in a blind storm of ash, alone except for Blays, vulnerable except the wrath he'd found in the nether. His silence deepened. Possibly, that was enough.
After weeks of travel the smoke of Whetton mingled with the dusky sky. Red clouds piled up to the west. The road forked, one branch east toward town, another to the south and Bressel. Dante led his horse east.
"Where are you going?" Blays said, jerking his head at the other path.
"Whetton."
"We're only a couple days out from Bressel."
"There's no hurry," Dante said. "I want to see what's become of the city."
Blays bit the skin around his thumbnail. "What if they recognize what's become of us? You do remember our last visit? The local hospitality of rope and high branches?"
"Last time we were here you looked like a rag wrapped around a stick," Dante said. "Look at you now in your fancy clothes, your hair cut straight."
Blays eyed him. "There were an awful lot of people in that field. Thousands, if I recall."
"If anyone gives us any trouble," Dante said, nudging his horse forward, "we'll just point them at our badges. They'll be in no rush to invite more trouble from the north. If that doesn't do it, we'll tell them about how, at great personal risk, we saved their stupid town from war."
"This will end badly," Blays declared, then rallied to catch up.
They headed down the road where months ago thousands of citizens had fled fire and battle. Today a shepherd was driving his flock to market and the pair skirted around the grungy blobs of walking wool. The outskirts of the city were hewn in fresh blond wood, offset here and there by the charred-out husks of what remained. The streets were thick with sodden ash and charcoal. The rap of hammers smacked on all sides. Masons and carpenters shouted from scaffolds wrapped around the sharp corners of damaged temples and half-constructed manors, squeezing out a few last minutes of work in the waning daylight. Men and women hurried home from market or the docks, or left the quiet warmth of their hearths for the clamor and company of a public house. Blays' mouth twitched at the signs above the pubs, the painted heads of stags or owls or an anchor tilted on its side.
"Pint?" Dante said, gazing down the street.
"As long as we're here," Blays grinned. They found a public stable and parted with some silver as their horses were led away to be groomed and fed. Blays elbowed Dante in the ribs and raced ahead through the damp chill of the early night. A fat turtle was printed above the doors of the first place he chose.
Blays flagged down a servant and they were brought mugs and ale. Dante drank slowly, pleasantly surprised to find he liked the taste. Perhaps he was getting older. When Blays wandered off to the latrine, Dante made a round of the room, holding a few brief conversations with any man or woman who looked at home.
"Drink up," he said when Blays got back.
"Suddenly there's a hurry again?"
"I have a terrible urge to go see if the inn where they arrested you was burnt down."
"If it hasn't, mind if we finish the job?"
"Let's see where the night takes us," Dante said. Blays drained his ale and they hit the street again. The laughter of men echoed through the alleys. They wandered the city, half-remembering streets they'd last seen half a year ago, their direction sense aided by a couple pints apiece. Dante kept an eye out for the boys who'd helped them then—he couldn't remember their names—but didn't see either. Probably, they hadn't made it through the upheaval; they'd had nothing to protect them even in times of peace. But they had had their wits. Maybe they lived yet, hiding under the docks, peering down from the roofs on the men who owned the streets, waiting to descend till they could take a piece for themselves.
Finally Dante and Blays came to the corner near the north end of town where they'd slept a single night. The building was gone, torn down, replaced by a few tents and a small shack. Blays spat on the dirt.
"Too bad buildings don't have tombstones," he said, giving the grounds the finger. "I have a sudden urge to urinate."
Dante peered down the street, knowing the pub the man in the Fat Turtle had directed him to had to be near. Blays finished his business and Dante headed down a cross street. Just when he thought he'd gone too far his eyes seized on the image of a four-fingered hand painted above a pub door.
"This looks as good as any," Dante said, swinging through the door. He glanced through the room, then sighed and took a seat. After an hour and two pints for him and four for Blays he was ready to try their luck somewhere else. Blays was rambling on about how they should try to get arrested again just to see if the watch had the guts when the door banged open.
"Be right back," Dante said, threading past tables and outstretched legs to intercept the man who'd just entered. He stood behind the brown-bearded figure and tapped him on the shoulder. "Time to meet your maker, you villain."
Robert Hobble turned and punched blindly for Dante's head. Dante sidestepped the blow, then jumped forward and grabbed the man's collar. Robert screwed up his face, eyes leaping between Dante's.
"Lyle's soiled drawers," he said with beer-thick breath. "You made it? Did you really do it?"
"It's done." Dante heard bootsteps behind him. He stepped aside.
"No thanks to you, you cowardly son of a bitch," Blays said. He brushed past Dante to face the old friend Dante'd been hunting since they stepped foot in Whetton.
"You'll understand some day, you filth-mouthed pup," Robert said, lips and eyes creased with a smile. He staggered forward and crushed Blays up in a hug. Blays' chin rested on the man's shoulder and he gave Dante a strange, knowing look he'd remember years after Blays had gone but would never be able to understand. At times he thought he saw gratitude in that look, but at others it could have been betrayal. Sometimes he saw nothing in it but a confusion so faint it was barely there at all, like the face of a man who's forgotten how it had ever felt to be young.
Robert unclinched, laughing and clapping his hands. "This calls for a round. Many rounds. Rounds until they get the picture and roll the keg right up to our table."
Dante hunted down a servant and let her know she had some lively stepping in her future. When he returned to the table Robert was already yammering on at Blays.
"So much has happened, boys," he said, draping one hand over the back of a chair and pointing at them with the other. "Came back and the place was a battlefield. I rallied a few of the fellows I knew to help retake the town and what do you know, they made me a captain!" He flicked a tri-colored badge on his chest. "How long are you here? Got time to hear a few of my stories before you start boring me with your own?"
"I think I know how all of yours start," Blays said. "'There I was, rum-soaked as the bottom of the barrel, when all of a sudden—'"
"It's like you were there!" Robert said, reaching across the table and giving him a knock on the shoulder.
"We'll be here for a while," Dante said. "For the moment there's nothing more."
They settled in to the warm smoke of the hearth, the earthy smell of simmering stew, the stinging taste of bitter ale. Around them men came and went and argued and joked. Dante bent down to his pack and made sure the book was still there. He was a young man in a strange world. Some day he would take his place among the black, but for now the book was his. Just as much, Robert would be there whenever he took the time to find him; for Blays, he couldn't imagine what could drive them apart. Dante leaned back on the solid wood of his chair, listening to the raucous calls of the crowd, to Robert's beery words and Blays' guarded laughter. His ears soared with the sounds of all those who still lived.
Credits, about the author
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If you enjoyed the read, please consider
checking out the sequel,
The Great Rift
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The White Tree
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I also have a blog at
http://edwardwrobertson.com
Cover art by Char Marie Adles. Map by Rhys Haug.
Ed lives in LA's South Bay, where he works as a movie critic for
The Tri-City Herald
and has sold twenty-odd short stories to magazines online and in print. Though he studied literary fiction at NYU, he found most of it had far too few explosions and turbocharged death machines.
MORE BY EDWARD W. ROBERTSON
NOVELS
The Cycle of Arawn, Book 2: The Great Rift
-- The epic fantasy sequel to
The White Tree
The Roar of the Spheres
-- Planet-hopping space opera
Breakers
-- Apocalyptic sci-fi/thriller
NOVELLAS
The Zombies of Hobbiton: A Martian Love Story
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
The Battle for Moscow, Idaho & Other Stories
