Meek

An hour after the drizzle stopped the next morning, Eli and Lara reached a humpback bridge spanning the river. A handful of buildings stood on the closer bank, and a handful of soldiers watched them approach.

"You're late for the harvest," one of them called, instead of a greeting.

"We're early for the next one, mir," Lara told her.

The soldier scratched her stomach through her uniform. "It's my duty to inform you that once you cross this bridge you're not in our valley anymore. You're on your own." She looked to Eli. "You understand that?"

"Yes, mir," he said.

Lara worried the sleeve of her dress with her fingers, making a show of nervousness. "We--we'll be okay, though?"

"Some are," the soldier said. "Some aren't. And some, they cross that bridge as bright-eyed as you. But coming back? The tales they tell could sour milk."

"Keep your ghost stories to yourself," another soldier called to her. "You're more superstitious than my dead gran. The olives won't harvest themselves and they're liquid gold, ain't they? Ehrat oil."

"That's why you're stationed here?" Lara asked the first soldier. "To warn people who come harvesting?"

The soldier spat. "We're here in case monsters come roaring out of the Weep. We'll light the signal fire and flog our mounts in the opposite direction."

"Monsters?" Lara asked, a hitch in her voice.

"There's a new horror rising," the soldier said, pitching her voice quieter and more urgent. "A nightmare made flesh. You want my advice? Run along home now, while you still can."

The air tasted different on the other side of the bridge.

Eli knew it was his imagination, but still. It tasted different. Everything else looked the same, though. The placid, wide river where ducks bobbed and frogs splashed. The rolling hills that dipped into wooded dells. The thickets of bushes, and the stands of trees.

Although the remains of gutted buildings dotting the countryside was new. Deer paths veered around crumbling walls in meadows of thistle and vetch. Half-fallen chimneys loomed over flagstone paths that led from nowhere to nowhere. The only intact structure they passed that morning was an outhouse standing lonely vigil over bramble of blackberry bushes.

At about noon, they reached roughhewn lean-to beside the road. Looked like a place for migrant laborers to rest. Eli sent a spark inside. Empty, with a handful of pallets for sleeping. A well-thatched roof against rain, too.

He withdrew the spark halfway before he noticed something else.

"Wait," he said in dryn. "There's a ... " He switched to Ionian. "How do you say 'map?'"

"Wait," she said in dryn. "There's a map."

"Wait, there's a map," he repeated. "Inside."

She joined his spark inside the lean-to, while Eli stayed outside, keeping the other spark straight overhead against any possible surprises. The map had been carved into a weathered pine board nailed to one log wall. The river and the humpback bridge appeared at the edge, then the road led northward to an X that clearly indicated the lean-to. The road continued toward the distant city--the distant Weep, which was shown as a high tower surrounded by tears. But three of the forks in the road before the Weep were marked with arrows that pointed the way to carved representations of olive trees.

"To help laborers find the groves," he said.

"There's a town," she said in dryn, tapping the map. "Here."

"You want we go town?" he asked.

"Yes, I think we should go to the town" she said, showing him how to say the sentence properly.

"Good," he said, and then in Iolian. "We can scout quietly after we get there."

The husks of buildings appeared more often as they travelled across the abandoned province toward the melted city. Aside from that, the day felt completely ordinary and harmless. Still, the very harmlessness set Eli's teeth on edge. There was a reason people had abandoned this half of Ehrat province. Barrels of oil or no, they should have stayed away. He didn't trust the tranquility. Every hour that passed without incident made him a little more uneasy.

And that was before they passed the signpost.

No writing remained: it was just a bare post at a crossroads ... and covered in a mass of flies. A thick swarm of them, audible from a fifty feet away.

They didn't disperse until Eli knocked a spark against the bottom of the post. Then they rose in a cloud and revealed what was beneath: a long loop of intestine draped over the top of the pole.

"Is that ..." Lara swallowed. "Human?"

"I don't know," he said.

"Should we bury it?"

"We should keep moving."

She nodded and didn't speak, her eyes troubled.

The flies returned to their meal as Eli led the donkey past, his jaw clenched. He relaxed after the next few hours passed quietly, though. If he'd seen that intestine as a kid, he would've figured a butcher's apprentice was playing a prank with sheep tripe. Just because they were heading toward the Bloodwitch's lair in the Weep didn't mean that everything was a portent, everything was an omen.

Most things meant nothing. In Ehrat or anywhere else. Meaningless was the default. Things just were, and he shouldn't spook himself by--

"Horses," he said, a moment before he consciously realized that his forward spark had heard hoofbeats. "Coming this way."

Lara clicked to the donkey and led her off the road. They'd been walked through two clusters of fallen farmhouses, where burned fields were filling in with saplings and shrubs. Eli figured that the riders were coming from the olive groves. That was the only reason anyone lived here, and who else would be trotting along the main roads with the sun high in the sky?

Though the sun wasn't high. Looked like an hour until dusk. Still, the brightness struck Eli as too cheerful for serious trouble. Probably oil-merchants from town, or farm overseers--or even Brazinka's mercenaries, who might be worth watching.

Still, he followed Lara off the road to the cover of a stand of milkbirch saplings. No reason not to be careful. And the saplings were thick enough to block them from any casual glances ... probably.

Lara offered Fern a handful of grass, to keep her quiet, then reached for her blowgun. The hoofbeats came nearer, but Eli's sparks didn't spot anyone for almost a minute. Far longer than he'd expected. Then he heard the jangling of gear, and they trotted into sight.

Seven riders.

Not merchants or overseers or mercenaries: bandits.

Dressed in mismatched armor, riding mismatched horses. Two warhorses, four drays, and one courser. Armed with spears and swords, mostly. The only thing that matched were their shortbows and quivers--that's how he knew they weren't mercenaries. Mercs usually took pains to look professional. And if they were attempted to appear patched-together, for some reason, they wouldn't all have identical bows. Bandits, on the other hand, scrounged whatever they liked from wherever they could. These must've stolen a crate from a bowyer or a shipment and--

And he needed to focus.

The bandits trotted closer, came abreast of the milkbirch saplings ... then continued past.

Eli exhaled in relief. He didn't like those odds. Not with Lara beside him. If things turned violent, he'd recover after they left him for dead. She wouldn't.

"Ho!" the bandit in front called, raising his hand.

The riders stopped, a stone's throw away, just beyond the hiding spot.

Well, blight. Eli shifted slightly, so his side touched Lara's. To reassure her--to reassure both of them.

"You see something, Bo?" a bandit with white-painted lips asked.

The one in front--Bo--was squat man with a pointed beard, who sat on a saddle like he'd been born there.

"No," he said, reaching for a sack tied beside him. "Smelled something."

"Gather up, lads and lasses," the white-lipped one announced. "You're in for a rare treat."

"Nothing rare about it, you goathumper," the earless woman sneered, from her courser.

"The rookie's never seen it before, Frog," he told her, jerking his chin toward the largest bandit, astride the largest dray horse. "He's gonna piss himself."

"Huh," the rookie said, looking perfectly bored. Then his gaze snagged on the boss and he squeaked, "Chains!"

Because Bo had pulled a dead animal from the sack. A stoat or weasel or polecat. Impossible to tell because it looked two weeks dead, with white eyes and a bloated abdomen, its fur matted with blood and fluids and--

And it lifted its head in the boss's grip and sniffed the air.

"What the halo?" the recruit gasped. "What the--what the ward is that?"

"A gift from our mistress," Bo said, and the stoat's dead eyes looked directly at Eli.