Chapter ten
When I woke the next morning, Sarah had already left the tent, and was outside preparing some kind of concoction. I got up, and ate breakfast silently with the twins, making sure to avoid eye contact with her. Just the night before I had lost all that anchored me to my emotional stability. The one person who felt familiar to me was out of my reach, and I didn't even know why. Some things heal quickly with a good night's sleep. This was not one of them.
As we got on the road, I began to think the twins knew what was up. They hadn't said anything, but at breakfast I noticed them eying me suspiciously, glancing occasionally between me and Sarah. To be honest, I didn't care what they thought.
"Duncan," Dean said quietly, as if testing dangerous waters.
"I don't want to talk about it," I said firmly, wanting only to forget that I had been so emotionally invested in the girl.
"Okay," He responded. Dean had of course seen the whole thing, but had learned to stay quiet when I was with girls. He knew I liked the illusion of privacy.
It was about noon when we began to notice a change in landscape. More and more trees lining the road were replaced by stumps, suggesting that we were nearing a village. When our group traversed the next hill, it came into full view.
The first thing I noticed was its sheer immensity. From our elevated position we could see clearly that this village was almost three times as large as mine, and probably held about four thousand people. A stone wall mostly encircled the town, as if defending against some unseen foe. The buildings appeared fairly small and numerous, all topped with red shingles with the exception of a couple large important looking buildings. Near the edge of town was a walled military encampment, complete with tall guard towers. We walked closer and found that the wall surrounding the town, while it had looked powerful and fortified near the front, it was smaller, and more accessible near the back. As we entered the city through an un-gated arch in the back wall, I wondered if the mountains on either side of it kept whatever they were trying to keep out from entering the same way we did. I did remember Sarah pointing out some mountains on the map, and realized how close we probably were to Kane. My thirst for revenge, not just for the past tragedies, but for recent ones as well, increased, and in a childish way, I imagined everything after Kane's death to become some sort of utopia.
The first thing that struck me was the smell. An awful smell, more terrible than any I have ever smelled, pervaded my very being. The stench seemed to permeate every cell of my body like water filling a sponge. I almost doubled over and vomited on the spot, and as we found ourselves in the city, we all began to cough and search for the cause of such a sickening aroma. To say the spectacle before us was shocking would be an understatement. The first thought through my head was why everyone was lying down. When the realization hit me it seemed to send a concussive force through me, and I felt more ill than I had ever felt in my life.
Blood mixed with water layered the cobblestone road to the height of almost an inch, and human entrails lay rotting all around the degrading carcasses of their previous owners. The bodies themselves looked as if someone had smashed them with hammers hundreds of times until all that was left was a grotesque mush made of muscle and bone. Each body was riddled with holes, but the cause of these holes was nowhere to be seen. The only clue we had as to the cause of death for the twenty something bodies before us was the layer of water that diluted the blood under our feet. Between the sound of splashing blood and crunching bones underfoot, and the overbearing smell, it was almost too much to take.
My head hurt, and I wanted to cry and vomit at the same time. James was already ahead of me, discarding his breakfast on the bloody stones beneath us. Seeing this awful spectacle brought back disturbing memories of my own village, and for a moment I just closed my eyes, trying to get my head to stop spinning. Sarah look severely ill, and we were all silent except Dean.
"Oh God..." he said softly. I didn't respond.
We stood there for about a minute, dumbfounded and unsettled, until a soldier armed with a spear shouted to us.
"Hey newcomers! Follow me, it's state policy that I have to bring all newcomers to the captain."
He looked dead to the world, as if some spirit was possessing the shell of a man who had once lived. His eyes were red and tired looking, as if he hadn't slept in days, and even when he spoke he seemed oblivious to both us and the horrible scene before him. We followed him in dazed compliance.
We walked a while through the city until we got to one of the larger buildings of the town. Along the way were more bodies, and occasionally we found people crying over the remains of a dead relative. I was tremendously relieved to be torn away from such a place when we finally entered the building after the guard.
Inside were important looking men pouring over maps spread out on tables, and soldiers training their swordsmanship on dummies. The men looking at maps all acted quickly, as if they were running out of time for something, and the soldiers training were acting strongly. A few were hitting the dummies so hard their swords would be dented after each blow, and others would be weakly thrusting their weapons in its general direction, completely devoid of energy or enthusiasm. I only had time to briefly observe this peculiar environment before we came to a man of about thirty who seemed completely out of place.
He was standing perfectly upright, holding a slender steel sword such that its point stuck gently into the wooden floorboards beneath us. He wore thin brown leather clothes, and sandals. The short brown hair on his head was neatly combed and he was entirely clean shaven. His eyes were closed, and his breathing was relaxed and even. He looked oddly at peace in a room full of chaos.
"Captain, four new people just arrived," the man we had been following said to him.
"Thank you Mathis, I'll take it from here," He said back in a calm and rich voice, "I have one question for all of you." His eyes remained closed while he spoke.
"Can you fight well?"
"Yes, all four of us do," I said, abandoning modesty.
"Good, you'll come in handy."
"For what exactly?" John questioned, narrowing his eyes.
"The war of course. We need all the men we can get."
"We have a quest to complete, so we really shouldn't be getting into a war," Sarah said, "We just came here for supplies."
"Well that's a shame."
Suddenly, the deep sound of a horn blasted three times. Panic dispersed itself through the people around us like fire through pitch. Many people could be heard screaming and crying all at once, and the men who seemed to be of the highest ranks were shouting orders to others.
"Get under a table now!" The captain shouted to us, diving under the nearest one to him with haste. We followed suit in a frenzy, thoroughly confused. Moments later, a sound like a rock bouncing off a window reverberated through the air. Several seconds after that, another one was heard, sounding as if it was impacting the roof. The people were all sitting under tables with their eyes closed and their arms tucked into their bodies as the sound gradually became more and more frequent, until all that could be heard were thousands of whatever was cascading against the ceiling. I yelped in surprise as a ball of ice the size of a walnut tore through the roof and landed a several feet from where I was crouching, leaving a dent in the hard wooden floor. Almost twenty more followed, and the barrage seemed to go on for hours. When it was finally finished I was shaking.
After I had pulled myself together and recovered from one of the most traumatizing moments of my life, I went to the captain for answers.
"Okay, what the hell just happened?" I spat vindictively, as if it was his fault I almost died.
"That is what we have been enduring for the past three days. We have lost many good men women and children, most of whom were civilians."
"What is it?" I asked.
"The vengeance of a Spirit from the beyond. The nation we are at war with has harnessed its power and now uses it against us. If they are not stopped, I fear we will all be dead within the week."
"I don't like the sound of that," said one of the twins, who had just walked up behind me.
"Neither do I, that's why I need all the help I can get to stop them. Can I trust you to help me?" The captain asked, addressing all four of us, now that the rest had entered the conversation.
"I don't even know your name," I said.
"Right, I forgot we hadn't had a proper introduction. I'm Solomon Graves, the man in charge of training the Hutti military."
"Hutti?"
"That's our city."
"Right. Will you excuse me for one moment?"
I pulled my friends aside to discuss our options.
"This Solomon guy wants us to fight for him, and I'm honestly considering it, what does everyone think?"
"We can't help him Duncan, we have a quest to complete," mentioned Sarah, biting her lip. I looked at the twins.
"If we win the war for them I'll bet there's some serious cash in it," said John.
"I'm in," said James.
"dean?" I asked telepathically.
"Sarah's right, we can't just abandon our mission. We have our own problems remember? Or have you already forgotten about your dead kinsmen?" he said sternly. His words stung me like arrows.
"I'm probably the only one in this entire city who can stop a spirit of the beyond. Leaving these people to die like this would be akin to murder," I argued, facing the group. The twins still had that greedy look in their eyes, and Sarah was crossing her arms. Dean glared at me, and I avoided his gaze.
"Please Sarah, from what the map says, it will only take a day or two to reach the other city on foot and stop the Spirit. I promise we will get back on our main quest when this is over."
"Fine, but it had better only take two days."
I turned back to Solomon.
"We're in."
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