Dawn of the Dreamsmith (The Raven's Tale Book 1) (59 page)

Before returning to his tent, Sturben crossed to the far edge of the camp, moving slowly for fear of tripping over a grassy tussock or bedroll. The prison cart still sat where they had left it that evening. Peering through the mist, he saw two huddled figures slumped on the floor. Neither moved, but without climbing inside the cage with them he was unable to tell whether or not they had slept through the disturbance. He wondered if he should question them, before shrugging and groping blindly back the way he had come. What could the captives possibly tell him about an animal attack?

The mist had still not lifted when they set out again shortly after dawn. It seemed to deaden all sound, so that each man might almost have believed himself to be marching alone. It was uncomfortably damp as well, and cold with it. After a while, Sturben began to shiver in his armour. He had long since removed his helmet in order to try and see as much as was possible through the fog, and his hair hung wetly down his face and the nape of his neck.

Once again they neither saw nor heard anybody else on the road that day. In any case, in that thick mist they would not have noticed other travellers until they were almost upon them. Sturben’s mood did not improve as they marched.
Surely this fog must lift soon.

Yet by nightfall, when he finally ordered his men to make camp at the roadside, it still had not cleared. Mindful of the events of the previous night, this time Sturben set lit braziers around the perimeter of the camp, and ordered sentries to stand by them and keep watch. It was a near-impossible task, he knew, but there seemed little alternative. With luck, the animal that had chased off his mount the night before was a dozen leagues away by now, sated, its belly filled with horseflesh.

For the second night running, Sturben was woken before dawn. This time he was shaken awake by an agitated young private. The soldier’s wide eyes and grave expression told him that the news was not good. “What is it this time?” he asked testily. “Has the bloody cat come back?”

“It’s young Egil, sir,” the private replied. “He wasn’t at his post when Jervis went to relieve him.” He swallowed nervously. “He thought maybe the lad had gone for a piss, but when he didn’t come back he went looking, and...”

“And what? Spit it out, man!”

“He found him, sir. What’s left of him, leastways.”

Sturben rose and dressed quickly, before striding out into the camp. The mist had not yet lifted, he saw. He didn’t need to ask where the young soldier had been found; the glow of torches was visible through the blanket of fog.

It seemed as though the entire camp was gathered together, huddled around an indistinct shape on the ground. The boy was lying at the base of a steep ridge. Bending down over the body, Sturben saw that the head was twisted around at an unnatural angle. “Did any of you see what happened?” he demanded.

“See what, exactly?” one man grumbled behind him. Sturben wheeled around to glare at the speaker. “Sorry, lieutenant,” the man continued. “But it’s this damn fog, ain’t it? I could barely see my dinner as I was eatin’ it, let alone what happened to the boy.” There was a ripple of agreement from the other soldiers.

Sturben stared up at the dark outline of the ridge. On his order, one of the braziers had been placed at the top of it. Not at the edge, but not far from it. The sentries had been instructed to stay by their fires, but perhaps the boy had wandered off to empty his bladder and become disorientated. It was not impossible. “He fell,” he told his troops. “An unfortunate accident, nothing more.”

Just then there were shouts from the direction of the camp. “Sure about that, lieutenant?” said a sour voice.

Sturben raced back the way he had come, stumbling over unseen obstacles as he went, until he reached the prison cart. Another dark shape lay sprawled on the ground nearby. He knelt and saw that it was the young private he had seen giving food to the prisoners the evening before. Where his throat should have been was a savage gash. The man’s eyes were wide but unseeing. The blood pooled beneath his body was still warm.

“Did he fall as well, sir?”

“Yer, right onto his blade, it looks like.”

Soon, the men that had followed him back to the camp were arguing among themselves. Sturben felt his fists clench as he leapt to his feet. “Silence, all of you!” he shouted. “Pack up your tents, we’re leaving at once.” Most of the soldiers disappeared into the mist to carry out his order, but a knot of men stood before him. “Do I need to repeat myself?”

“Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but leave for where?” asked one as the others nodded.

Sturben looked at him as though he had lost his mind. “Are your brains addled?” he replied incredulously. “We continue to Ehrenburg.”

The men grumbled. “We should turn back before we end up like young Egil,” said a pikeman. “The spirits of the Shadowlands are drawn to the condemned, everyone knows that.” There was a chorus of agreement. “These mists are cursed,” ventured another.

Sturben struck the pikeman a stinging blow across the cheek. “The next man who questions my orders will suffer the same fate as the private there, but it will be by my hand and not that of some old wives’ tale.”

The men turned away reluctantly, and it was then that Sturben noticed what was missing. “Where’s the ox?”

They searched as far around the camp as they were willing to venture in the thick fog, but there was no trace of the creature that had pulled the prison cart. The rope that secured it while they made camp had been cut. Unlike the horse’s tether the previous night, which had been torn free, the oxen’s rope was cut neatly; a sharp blade had been used.
No animal did this.

Sturben marched up to the bars of the cage. “What about you two?” he growled. “Did you see who did this?” The young monk merely shrugged apologetically, while the older man did not even acknowledge the question. He simply stared at him, stony-faced.

Exasperated, Sturben harangued his troops until they were ready to set off once more. It was unbelievable that none had seen whoever was responsible for the private’s death or the escape of the ox. With growing disquiet, he decided that the sentry’s fall was no accident; in light of the other incidents it seemed likely to have been a diversion of some kind. But who was responsible? If it was bandits, then why go to such lengths to steal nothing of value?

Before they set off again, Sergeant Grimes approached Sturben. “What about them, sir?” he asked, jerking a thumb towards the prisoners.

“We bring them of course,” Sturben replied gruffly. “Did you think we’d open up the bars and set them free in the Shadowlands?”

“Course not, sir. But they can’t sit here, neither. Who’s to pull them now we’ve lost the ox?”

Sturben stared at the sergeant, then rubbed his eyes. How could he not have seen that before now? Lack of sleep, most like, after being woken before dawn two nights running. “Order four of the men to pull the bloody cart,” he said. “Those who were just grumbling about turning back will suffice.”

Grimes grinned nastily. “Yessir,” he said, before disappearing into the mist to carry out Sturben’s order.

That third day’s march was even more miserable than the two that preceded it. Sturben’s feet had begun to ache and he could feel blisters forming. But there was no other choice but to continue; riding atop the prison cart being drawn by two of his men would be a sight too ridiculous to contemplate. Worse was the damp, which seemed to have penetrated every slight gap in his armour, causing his skin to chafe and itch horribly.

But what annoyed him most of all was the pace they now set. Losing his charger was bad enough, though even then he had only been able to walk at the pace set by the rest of their company. But having to pull the prison cart by hand had slowed their progress to a crawl. What would have been a five or six day march through the forsaken Shadowlands could now take twice as long.
We’ll take a ship back from Ehrenburg
, he vowed.
I’d rather risk pirates and winter storms than spend another week marching back through this damned fog.

That was the day the ridges they had been marching through fell away. They had reached the wide open plains of the Shadowlands, though it was impossible to see any of the surrounding lands through the thick fog that persisted. Sturben came to despise the smothering mists. After every step he took, his vision was blocked by the white curtain, and he took the next one knowing it would be the same after that, and for the step after that. There was no sound, no smells beyond his own sweat and the faint odour of brimstone that told him the hot springs were close by. All that existed was the mist. If not for the road, they might have been marching through oblivion; doomed men searching in vain for the afterlife.

The men were not having an easy time of it either. As they marched, Sturben caught snatches of murmured grumbles, more than once hearing mentions of wraiths and spectres. After a while he stopped reacting to the mutters that reached his ears. Who was he to tell his men that such things did not exist? His own eyes began to play tricks on him. Every so often, the tendrils of mist in front of him took on various forms; his father, dragging a sobbing boy by the hand, General Vitrian regarding him with a look of deep disdain. Men and women he had known, some that he had killed by his own hand. Then the phantoms from his past would fade once again into the fog, to his relief.

Every so often they passed by dark stone pillars, strange edifices that dotted the plains. They had always stood there, as far as he knew, or at least for such a length of time that no records existed of whose hands had raised them. They almost looked like shrouded figures standing by the side of the road, silently watching their sombre procession.

That night, Sturben once again set the braziers around the edge of their camp, but this time ordered pairs of sentries to stand by them. They were to whistle to one another every ten minutes, to signal that all was well. It wasn’t ideal, he knew, but hopefully such measures would stop their camp being infiltrated yet again. When he fell asleep that night, the sound of whistles piercing the night air filled his ears.

The next morning, when a granite-faced Sergeant Grimes told him the news, he had to stop himself from striking the older man. He didn’t believe it possible. “Six men?” he cried disbelievingly. “We lost six men in the night?”

“Yessir. Three pairs of sentries gone.” The sergeant’s face was unreadable, but Sturben detected a note of disapproval in his tone. “Their replacements discovered it when they went to relieve them.”

“Where are their bodies?”

Grimes hesitated before replying. “That’s just it, sir,” he said. “When I said gone, gone is what I meant. There’s no bodies, no blood. Nothing.”

“How is that possible?” Sturben ran a trembling hand through his sodden hair.
Are we cursed after all?
“What about the signals, did that not alert you?”

Grimes smiled without humour. “The signals carried on throughout the night, sir. Every ten minutes, just as you ordered.”

There were murmurs behind him. Sturben turned and saw a group of men, larger than the morning before, standing half-hidden in the fog. The faces that he was able to see were mutinous. He stood his ground. “Pack up the camp,” he ordered, teeth bared.

He felt a pang of anxiety as the men continued to stand before him. “What’s to be done, lieutenant?” asked one soldier.

“We continue to Ehrenburg,” he insisted. “Nothing has changed.”

“Do you really think the spirits will let us leave?”

“What spirits?” Sturben replied dismissively. “This is the work of bandits. They won’t catch us off-guard again.”

There were grumbles from the gathered soldiers. “When bandits kill, they leave bodies,” said one. “And they only attack when there’s something to steal.”

“Who ever heard of bandits attacking a Legion company?” spat another. “What’s happening to us isn’t the work of men.”

Sturben angrily grabbed the last speaker by the front of his tunic and with a punch sent him sprawling to the ground. The man, a scarred corporal, pressed a hand to his lip. “You’ve doomed us,
lieutenant
,” he husked, spitting a thick gobbet of blood and saliva into the mud. “We could’ve turned back yester-morn, and we’d be back within sight of the keep by now. It doesn’t matter now which way we go... the spirits will claim us all before we see another living soul.”

In one motion, Sturben drew his sword and brandished it at the group. The men stepped back as the blade pointed in their direction. A tiny voice in the back of his mind counselled him against this action, but he ignored it. Blood pounded in his ears. Before his eyes the mist transformed the features of the faces in front of him, until he was again staring at those he recognised from his past. The grim visage of one particular phantasm that loomed towards him made him recoil. “Krieg?” he whimpered, taking a step backwards. “It cannot be... I killed you once, already.”

He raised the sword, preparing to strike at the apparition, but Grimes leapt between him and the group of soldiers. His hands were raised in appeasement. “No need for that, sir,” he said with forced geniality. “Tensions just running a bit high, that’s all. It’s been a tough few days, and the lads are just blowing off some steam, isn’t that right lads?”

There was a chorus of muted agreement. Sturben stared at the sergeant, agape. Then the pounding tumult in his ears receded. A fire that he hadn’t even realised was raging within him was quenched suddenly. He lowered the sword. “Pack up the camp,” he said again, quietly. “Let us leave this place.”
While we still have our minds.