Wander West, in Shadow

Slowly, the four walked forth in the shade of silent pine boughs, silent amongst themselves, the only sound that of their footsteps in the snow.

Martim glanced upward at the sky, shielding his eyes against the sun, to catch a glimpse of Flit flying overhead, his familiar glad to be able to take to the skies once more. He shivered as he glanced around at the fores tthrough which they walked, endless rows of tree trunks rising from a blanket of white. He had forgotten how eery the forests were, where the bogge-men stalked, how quiet they were, utterly devoid of birdsong. The wind whispered through the branches, the pine trees swaying in the breeze.

It would not be a long walk for them to reach what the Crosscraw called the 'Killing Grounds', the lands their clans had once occupied before they had holed up in Dun Cairn. When he had looked at the maps Aela and Grizel had shown him, he realized just how little of the mountain range they had seen. Dun Cairn, and the lands the Crosscraw still risked hunting in, were tiny compared to the large stretches between the peaks they had once called home. And the Killing Grounds, apparently, were thick with the bogge-men - they liked to linger where they had done their slaughter, Grizel said, drawing some kind of satisfaction from the places where they had spilled blood.

Aela led them through this forest, which was good, since Martim could not tell one place from another among all these pines. The Crosscraw woman was quiet as she did so, barely saying a word as she directed them down the right paths, seeming lost in thought. Elyse, too, was hushed, never speaking except to murmur to Cecil to be careful not to wander too far off among the trees, though Martim was aware that the witch was giving him strange looks from time to time. He was grateful when Kells spoke up to break the tense silence that had settled among them.

"So," the soldier said, tone light-hearted, as if they were out for a simple stroll, "I've a riddle for you. A fisherman and a farmer walk into a tavern." He shot them all a small smile as they turned to look at him, leaning a spear back against his shoulder, one Aela had given him from the Crosscraw's pile of weaponry to replace the one he had lost on his way up the mountain. "And they get to arguing about which of them has the tougher job. 'In my job, you need to be so patient,' the fisherman says. 'Sometimes, you don't catch a single fish for hours and hours. Just need to tough it out.' Well, the farmer hears this, and he scoffs, 'Hours? Try waiting a whole season for your crops to grow.'"

"I think I've heard this one," Elyse interrupted. "It turns out the fisherman is sleeping with the farmer's wife, right?"

Kells gave her a long stare. "Uh, no," he replied. "'Tis a riddle, not a joke, sister. Anyway, a merchant overhears the fisher and the farmer, and he laughs at them both. 'Just a season? Why, it can take my investments years to turn a profit,' he declares. And while they debate this, another voice pops up; this time it's the local baron. 'Just years?' he says. 'I've got to wait nearly two decades to make sure my sons grow into proper heirs.' So they're all arguing about this, when a skinny, pale little man pipes up. 'You're all fools,' he says. 'None of you are as patient as I. For I have a job that I must wait lifetimes to complete.' What do you suppose the man's job was?"

There was quiet among them as they trudged along, contemplating this. Suddenly, Elyse's eyes lit up, and she gave a wicked grin. "I know what it is! He's a graverobber."

"Well, I was thinking gravedigger, but I suppose both work," Kells chuckled.

Martimeos gave a small smile at the riddle, but Aela paused in her tracks for a moment, and then let out a great guffaw. "A graverobber!" she wheezed, wiping tears from her bright green eyes. "Ah like that one. Alright, Ah got one fer ye. Try an' guess what this es. Most men hae one. Et's long an' hard, an' if ye stick et where et belongs, et'll come back out all wet. Most girls are afeart tae touch et at first, but come tae like holdin' et. As a boy grows intae a man, his usually gets bigger. When they're younger, men jest can't keep their hands off et, though they tend tae lose interest a bit when they get old. What es et?"

Kells gave a snort, slate-gray eyes full of mirth. "I've heard this one," he declared. "But I'll let yon witch and wizard venture a guess."

"Um..." Martimeos replied, his mind racing. It couldn't be the obvious answer, but there was only one thing that came to his mind.

"I mean...it must be a man's nethers!" Elyse cried before he could give an answer, her cheeks stained pink, though she crossed her arms and stared definatly at Aela as if she were not embarrassed at all. "What else could it be? 'Tis all I can think of."

"All ye can think of," Aela replied, biting her lip, eyes watering. "Men's nethers es all ye can think of, is tha' right?" And then she burst into laughter, slapping Kells on the back, who looked as if he was struggling to contain it himself.

"You know what I mean!" Elyse muttered, pulling her hat down to hide her face. "If that is not the answer, then what is?"

"Alright, Ah'll tell ye," Aela choked out, when at last she had spent her mirth. "Et's nae a man's fun bits. Et's a blade."

Elyse glared at Kells and Elyse as they fell into laughter amongst themselves once more. "Oh, what girl is afraid to touch a blade," she snapped.

"I have one myself," Martim spoke up, before the witch's anger could grow too dark. "A King approaches a cobbler, and says that he has good work for him. The King, you see, is planning a war, and he wants someone to keep the boots of his entire army repaired as they are on the march. The cobbler thinks about this for a moment, and comes up with a clever plan to keep every soldier's boots fresh with just one nail. How did he do this?"

This one seemed to have the others stumped. Kells frowned, and rapped on his kettle-helm with his fingers, as if this might help him to think. Elyse's face brightened, and she opened her mouth, looking as if she were about to answer, but then shut it again, furrowing her brow and shaking her head. "Does he make 'em march barefoot...?" Aela asked thoughtfully, tugging at her long red hair. "But ef that's et, what does he need th' one nail fer?"

"No, that's not the answer." Martim slipped his pipe from his pocket, smiling, satisfied with himself, as he packed it with tobacco.

"Well, it has me at a loss," Kells said after a few more moments spent in contemplation. "What is it then, wizard?"

Martim drew at his pipe, and exhaled a long plume of smoke. "Who said," he replied, "You'd get the answer, if you couldn't think of it?"

"Oh, just tell us," Elyse growled at him, kicking a snow drift his way, coming alarmingly close to putting his pipe out.

Martimeos frowned at her as he brushed snow off the front of his tunic. "Very well. He 'fixes' the King's boot first. With just one nail, and a drop of poison."

The witch snorted, as Kells and Aela absorbed the answer in silence. "That one is not very clever. Might as well say he stabbed the King, and managed to do it with no nails at all."

"Well, I like it," Martim muttered darkly. "Let's hear one from you, then."

"Me? I am not much one for riddles," Elyse replied, but she tapped her fingers to her lips thoughtfully. "How about this. I have touched all water that has ever wet your tongue, though if you found me there you'd spit it out. I find my way to touch everything you own, in fact, though you desperately try to keep me away. You spend your life dreading the day I inevitably swallow you whole. What am I?"

They all considered this slightly ominous riddle for a few quiet moments. "Bit of a grim one, isn't it," Kells said. "I know what it is. It's dirt."

Their mood brightened a bit, despite the dark path that lay ahead of them and Elyse's gloomy riddle, they continued on like this, trading jokes and riddles as they walked along. They grew braver, and their voices louder, as they made their way through unaccosted by any bogge-men, almost as if they were trying to push back the oppressive silence of the woods with good cheer amongst themselves. Their laughter became infectious amongst themselves easily, and they laughed far harder than they mght have otherwise. There was something about the danger that lay ahead, perhaps, that filled them with a desire to laugh whie they still could.

When they first stopped to rest and eat, however, what had been a pale gray sky this morning had since grown more dark and foreboding, and the first few snowflakes began to gently drift down. It was not a heavy snow, as of yet, but it was a sort of enchanting, eery beauty, watching the snow fall amongst the pines, while above it all bleak, gray crags strained upwards towards the sky.

However, as they continued on, and made their way closer and closer to the Killing Grounds, Aela became more agitated, and more quiet, their mirth dampened. Martim's plan was not to hide from the bogge-men, this time - according to Grizel, there'd be far too many across their path for there to be much hope of that anyway. Rather, he was curious to see how they would treat him, now that Hadley knew of him. He assumed - hoped, more like - that they would not attack. If they did, he did not know how this mission might be successful at all. There was no way they could fight their way through an entire small army of the creatures. It was curious, though, how they had not encountered any at all so far. Perhaps, Martim thought, they would simply leave him alone entirely.

However, it was not to be.

They were walking a trail in the shadow of a bleak cliffside, where the pine's branches brushed up against the bare rock and their rootss crawled across it in tangled knots. They could hear, from somewhere up ahead, the sound of rushing water crashing against stone, a low, constant, dull roar. Martim was frowning, eyeing his tobacco pouch, realizing that he would need to ration his reserves, when Flit fluttered down from the sky to alight on his shoulder, and burbled in his ear that up ahead he had spotted a bogge-man.

When he told the others of this, their faces grew grim. Kells clutched his spear in one hand, and unbuckled his iron-framed wooden targe from his back, holding it at the ready before him. Aela, going pale, nocked an arrow into her blackwood bow, arms trembling slightly, her long red mane floating about her in the breeze. Elyse readied her crossbrow, winching it back to set a bolt. But Martimeos, he retrieved a torch from his pack, holding it aloft, and focusing upon it with the Art until it burst into flame. And then, sword drawn in his other hand, they moved forward, through the shadows of trees that now seemed that much more foreboding.

They were utterly silent as they moved forward, the sound of their breath and their heartbeats drowned out by the low sound of rushing water growing ever-louder. Kells took the lead, hiding as much of his body as he could behind his shield, crouching how and tucking himself in as he crept forward, storm-gray eyes ever watchful for the slightest hint of movement in the forest. Until, with a sharp hiss, he halted, and pointed forward through the trees.

Up ahead, the forest line broke, sloping down to the ice-frosted banks of a small river that flowed swiftly as it curved ahead of them, its eddying currents choppy and white-frothed as it crashed about its rocky path. It was fed by waterfall that crashed down from the cliffs above, leaving the rocks it passed by slick with a thick film of rime. And there, upon a large, flat boulder that hung over the river, a shadow against all the white, was a bogge-man, sitting upon a bogge-horse.

Its back was turned to them, as if it were staring into the rapid currents of the river, lost in thought. But as they paused among the trees, watching, and wondering how to proceed, the bogge-man gathered the reins of its wicked steed, and it pivoted gracefully upon the boulder, the clop of its hooves ringing out clearly over the sound of the waterfall, until it turned to face where they hid. This one had what looked like the skull of a wolf for a helm, though far larger than any wolf's skull had a right to be. Wound around the sharp, bleached-white teeth of the wolf's skull was a bright blue thread, forming a strange sort of web holding togethter the upper and lower jaw. Its yellow eyes blazed like beacons through the haze of falling snow, as it stared directly at where they hid.

Before they had time to react, the bogge-man reached for its belt, and from there drew forth the ehad of a Crosscraw woman, holding it up by her long red hair. This one was grotesque in its decay, jaw hanging open loosely, skin gray, eyes rolling in sunken sockets, but Aela, it seemed, recognized it. "Oh Ancestors, Marsail," she whispered, and then bent over and noisily emptied her stomach upon the snow.

The head worked its jaw as the bogge-man held it aloft, as if remembering how to speak, and then finally seemed to gain control over it and gave a rotting grin. "I...know...you're there," it said, in a gravelly, scraping voice, as the bogge-man looked at them. "Martim...eos. I have...words...for you."

Martimeos grew pale, his arm holding the torch trembling slightly, as he stared through the trees at the bogge-man, his mouth a thin grim line.

"Come...out," the head the bogge-man held continued. "And fear...not. You...and yours...are safe...from me."

Martim glanced around, at the wide, staring eyes of Kells, Elyse and Aela. He steeled himself, taking a deep breath. "Well," he said quietly, "There's nothing for it. I will approach it. You lot stay here, in case we need to flee." And then he stepped out from behind the trees, and carefully made his way down the small slope to the banks of the river, watching his footing to ensure that he did not slip on the icy rocks.

As he drew near to the bogge-man, a familiar feeling of icy dread and revulsion gripped his heart. This one was not quite so large as the bogge-man they had faced in Twin Lamps, though it still stood head and shoulders above the tallest man Martim had ever known. Its coal-black steed snorted and whinnied as he drew near, revealing sharp, savage fangs, droplets of blood staining the snow around it as it shook its mane. He did not draw so close to the creature, stopping perhaps twenty feet away, staring up defiantly at it and holding the torch well in front of him, as the bogge-man gazed down with those blazing eyes from its perch. "Well," Martim said, once he had found his voice through his fear, "Here I am. What are your words for me, creature?"

The bogge-man did not respond for a moment, its bright, gleaming eyes simply watching, burning, as if it might bore a hole through him with its stare alone. "The First....wishes...to speak...to you," the head it held said finally, just when Martim had begun to wonder if he had made a mistake in trusting this thing when it said he was safe. "I...will take...you to him."

Martimeos stared quietly at the creature. "The First," he said. "Do you mean Hadley?"

"I...will take...you to him," the bogge-man repeated simply.

Martimeos set his jaw to stop his teeth from chattering, holding the torch up as a ward between himself and the bogge-man. He struggled to think clearly, against the rising tide of icy panic he felt clutching at his chest. He desperately wanted to see Hadley - he had words for the man as well - and here was an offer to go straight to him. At least, supposing that the bogge-man could be trusted. Without having to journey through the Killing Grounds, and learning whatever it was the ogres had to tell. But that was just it. He still had no idea what the Bogge-King was, nor how it might be killed, if it came down to that. He couldn't face Hadley, not now. He needed to know how it was to be done, first.

He glanced behind him, back at the forest. There, at the edge of the treeline, stood Aela, Kells and Elyse, watching him in his parlay with the bogge-man. Both Elyse and Aela had their bows aimed at the creature, and Kells hefted his spear, as if he intended to throw it, if the need arose, as well. "If I tell you no," Martimeos answered, turning back to the bogge-man, "Will my friends and I still be safe from you?"

The bogge-man betrayed no emotion, upon hearing this answer. It merely raised its head, and stared out across the banks of the river, up towards the forest. Martimeos watched as its blazing eyes drifted without stopping across Kells and Elyse. But then they settled upon Aela, and the bogge-man paused. And then it reached towards its belt, where its cruel, curved sword was sheathed.

"She is with us," Martimeos snapped, stepping forward with the torch, feeding it with the Art so that it flared brightly in his hands. "Will we be safe?"

The bogge-man slowly turned its head back, staring at Martim once more. The lights in its eyes seemed to dance against the swirling snow. "I...obey...the First. You will...be safe...from us."

"Tell Hadley, then," Martim shouted at the thing, doing his best to hide the waver in his voice. "Tell your First, we will come to see him soon. But we....we have errands to run, before we do."

And then, to his surprise, the bogge-man laughed. Not through the head it held, but the bogge-man itself laughed, an ugly, shrieking sound that echoed off the cliffside. "Strange...little man," the head said, once it had finished. "Clever...little wizard." The wolf-skull helm leered, as the bogge-man leaned forward in its saddle, and for a moment, Martim thought, it seemed as if it was grinning at him. "I wish...you luck...Mar...tim...eos."

And then with a tug at the reins, the bogge-man's black and bloody mount reared and shrieked, massive hooves pawing at the air. In an instant, it was at a breakneck gallop, and Martimeos screamed in panic, diving out of the way as it barreled past him, the thunder of its hooves striking the ground sickeningly close to his head enough to make his heart stop. It tore down the river bank, and with a mighty leap, jumped across where the waters were narrow. And then it disappeared amongst the trees, black cloak fluttering behind it, and within mere moments the only sign that it had ever been there were the fading sounds of the bogge-horse's hooves.

Trembling, Martim got to his feet, looking ruefully at the extinguished torch he held in his hands, its flames having been smothered when he dover into the snow. He could hear Elyse, Kells, and Aela rushing down the slope towards the riverbank, shouting his name, but he ignored them. His leg throbbed, as he staggered towards the boulder upon which the bogge-man and his steed had stood. He stared numbly at the imprint of hooves sunk into the stone itself, welled up with blood.

Kells was the first to reach the wizard, his long legs carrying him in a dead sprint down the slope despite the heavy pack he wore. "Black hells, man," he panted, stopping just short of bowling into Martim, "Are you alright? I thought for a moment there that thing had trampled you."

"I'm fine," Martim replied quietly, still staring at the imprint of the horse hooves in the stone, his black-furred cloak fluttering in the breeze. He turned only when he heard Aela and Elyse catch up, tugging his scarf close to his face against the chill as he did so. The Crosscraw woman looked pale and sick, while the witch looked angry enough to chew nails.

"Should have known better than to trust one of those creatures," Elyse practically spat, eyeing Martim up and down, looking for wounds. "It says we'll be safe from it, and then it goes and nearly crushes you. I wonder if you can say we really are safe from them at all."

"No," Martim replied softly, "I think we will be. I think these things simply...enjoy terrorizing people." He glanced towards Aela, who was looking at him very strangely, biting her lip and tugging at her long red hair anxiously. "Is something the matter?"

Aela stared back at him, for a moment, and then looked away towards the ground, as if she had trouble meeting his eyes. "Nae," she said quietly. "Et's jest...nae tae say ye were lyin', or anythin. But when ye tol' me th' Bogge-King was yer friend, Ah had a hard time...acceptin' et, en mah heart. It seemed so strange. But Ah ent ever seen a bogge-man talk wit' someone like tha', an' promise them safety." She glanced back up towards him, and then away again. "Ah suppose et really es true," she murmured. "Et really were one o' yer folk comin' back fer rightful revenge tha' did all this."

"There is nothing 'rightful' about this," Martim snapped harshly. "And...the Bogge-King....Hadley would not be the kind of man to carry this sort of spite in his heart. Whatever has changed him, that is what is responsible." He sighed, sheathing his sword, and then ran a hand through his shaggy hair, staring back once more at the imprints on the rock. "Did it seem...strange to you, besides that? The bogge-man, I mean. It seemed more...lively, than others we have met."

Kells frowned, tapping the shaft of his spear against the steel breastplate he wore. "I did have that thought, myself. I had begun to think of these things as, well....not mindless, I suppose. But I did think it a little odd to hear it wish you good luck." He spat, eyeing downriver, where the bogge-man had disappeared. "Who knows what drives these things."

"Et ent unheard o' fer a bogge-man tae hae a...sick sense o' humor," Aela whispered, still staring down at the ground. "Ah ent ever seen what they're like when they ent tryin' tae kill ye, so Ah cannae say ef this one were strange en that regard."

"Hmm." With shaking hands, Martimeos pawed absent-mindedly at the pockets of his pants, not realizing what he was missing until Elyse handed him his pipe.

"Here, wizard," she said, giving him a grim smile. "You dropped this when you dove. Though you ought to take it slow. I've a feeling you'll run out of your pipeweed long before this is done."

Martimeos offered her a small smile of thanks, as Kells shaded his eyes, and looked out across the river. He stepped near to the bank, careful of the raging waters, and cautiously dipped his spear into it as far out as he could, shaking his head as he drew it back. "Currents seem very strong. I don't suppose we'll be crossing this here."

"We willnae need tae cross et at all," Aela replied. "We follow et fer a time, an' then turn south. Et ent far naow. We are almost tae th' killin' grounds."

They lingered here in this spot, for a while, not out of any need, but out of simple reluctance to do what they knew must come next. But eventually, Martimeos finished the tobacco in his pipe bowl, and Kells had finished filling their waterskins by the river's edge, and there was nothing else to be done. It was time to follow the river, and journey into the lands the bogge-men had stained with the blood of an entire people.

It was not long, following the river, for the forest around them to change. The pine barrens they had traveled through before now had felt the touch of the bogge-men, with their eery, still silence. These woods, though - something much more, happened here. Gradually the pines surrounding them changed; they began to grow crooked and thick, their branches twisted and gnarled and bare, their bark black, looking almost as if they had been burnt. Elyse tried to talk to them, and said they were dead, or just barely living, though she could not say what it was that plagued them and had twisted them so. But like towers of crooked black hands, they clawed at the gray sky, reaching upwards through the snow that fell ever-heavier now.

And it was not long after they had left the river behind, turning at a bend it made in its path, that they spotted their first corpse.

Gray and rotted, borderline skeletal, but mummified somewhat by the cold, it hung from one of the twisted pines, nailed there to the trunk through its feet, hands and eyes. All that remained of its clothing was a few tattered scraps that still clung to it, but so advanced was its decay that it it was impossible to tell if it had once been man or woman. A few remaining wisps of hair, the red long since having faded from them, still clung to its skull. Its jaw hung open, giving it a stange, malformed grimace as they passed it by.

But this first corpse was only the beginning. More and more often, they spotted them, sometimes hanging nailed to a tree, sometimes so old and decayed that they had fallen down and lay in a stiff, unmoving heap, tangled among the roots. All very old corpses, and seemingly untouched by scavengers - most predators, Aela said, would not dare to touch a bogge-man's kill.

Aela herself was taking the sight of the corpses oddly. She must have been no stranger to death at this point, but while she greeted the first few with grim stares, the more that appeared, the more it seemed to affect her. Her eyes went wide and wild, and she began to shake so badly that she very nearly lost her footing more than once, until she simply steadfastly refused to look at them, biting her lip so hard it bled to keep herself from crying out.

But as for Martim, with every corpse he saw - every gray and sightless stare, every grimace of horror and skeletal, shrunken limb - there was a tickling, at the back of his mind. It must have taken such rage, to do this. Such furious and black hatred, to not only kill the Crosscraw, but put up their bodies in macarbre display. And as he saw more, and more, and more, it was as if he could hear the dim, howling roar of the Bogge-King in the back of his mind, full of such inhuman fury. And he could not help but wonder just how much of that fury actually belonged to Hadley. It was true the smith had been the kindest man he knew. But it was also true that few had lost as much in the raid on Pike's Green as he, and few had seemed so changed by it after. But still, he thought, it was not Hadley. Hadley would not have harbored such a bleak and sadistic hate in his heart. Whatever had changed him, that was what had done this.

And he thought, after seeing enough of them, he had gotten used to the sight. Until they walked past a large boulder that blocked their path, and through into a small clearing. It took him a moment to drink in what he was seeing. And when he did, he shouted with horror, stumbling backwards, tripping into Kells and Elyse as he did so.

Here, corpses hung from every tree. Every single one, and on some, more than one had been nailed. And many, many of them were far too small to have been adults. Where they were not nailed to the trees, they were tangled in the roots. There must have been hundreds of them, if not more, all of them skeletal and rotted and frozen, faces the grimaces of a corpse, staring, leering, the wind blowing through the wisps of hair and the tattered remnants of their clothing. That roar of rage in the back of his mind reached a crescendo now, as he looked at this, and he thought, for the first time, he understood why necromancers were so fascinated by the dead. For there was power in death; certainly, there was power here, power enough to drive the air from his lungs. For he had seen corpses, before, even very many of them, in the catacombs of Dun Cairn, but here - where the sheer ugliness and brutality of how they had been killed was so plain - there was something awful, but powerful, sickeningly tempting, in all that horror. Like a wound you could not help but pick and tear at.

He could hear Kells saying something to him; he could hear Aela coughing and sobbing frantically, but it all seemed so very far away in this moment, where the countless dead of the Crosscraw, victims of Hadley's rage - gone forever, robbed forever of life, Martim's mind babbled frantically - stared at a darkened and gray sky, the snow piling on them.

And in the center of the clearing, oblivious and uncaring to the sickness around him, was the massive bear Mors Rothach. And shouldn't that be just so, Martim thought, for he was a necromancer's familiar. Like a gigantic, black-furred blasphemy, he lay with his paws crossed before him, and gnawed idly upon one of the corpses with jaws large enough to swallow it whole.

The bear raised its snout, nostrils flaring, and grinned at Martim, one half of its face furred and normal, the other half a mass of twisted, scarred flesh and missing eye. Its one good eye, orange and fierce, stared at him, and while he could hear nothing else, Martim could hear the rumbling, wild speech of Mors, as the bear sat in the midst of all that death and feasted upon it.

"IT TOOK YOU LONG ENOUGH TO MAKE YOUR WAY HERE," Mors Rothach said, its voice a low growl, like the earth itself shaking. "WELCOME, WIZARD, TO THE KILLING GROUNDS."