Wander West, in Shadow

By the next morning, snow had begun to fall once more - thick and heavy, but oddly silent, without wind - and it made their journey through the Killing Grounds feel like a surreal and silent dream.

Through the haze of white they marched, unable to see anything beyond ten feet very clearly, all the features of the land disappearing into a haze of murkey gray. It was by the nose of Mors that they were guided, the bear able to smell the landand know the markings of it. The blackened, skeletal corpses of pine trees stretched up into a gray and dark sky as they made their way, grim totems of what had happened in this place.

They had not walked for long before they saw their first bogge-man.

It loomed up out of the snowfall, a dark shadow amidst the murk, its gleaming, burning yellow eyes piercing through the gloom, hellish beacons that pinned them with a sickening stare. But it made no move toward them; it made no move at all. It simply stood, perfectly still, watching, as they passed. Never close enough to make out its features clearly, amidst the snowfall. Nothing but a blurry shadow with two boiling points of light as eyes.

And it was not the last. Out of the gray, beneath the dead trees, their eyes blazing through the dim, bogge-men stood alongside their path like sentinels, Never did they move, or seem the slightest bit affected by the cold. Their march was a silent procession beneath the watchful, hellish eyes of these creatures. It was reassuring, to have Mors beside them, who did not seem to fear the bogge-men at all. But the eery silence and their utter stillness was enough to fill them with dread.

"What do you suppose they're doing," Kells muttered finally, breaking the quiet. He tugged his fur cloak closer to him, and brushed off the snow that had gathered on the brim of his kettle-helm. "Is this supposed to be their form of escort...?"

"Ah dinnae think so," Aela answered, her voice hushed. She walked along with one hand on Mors' side, and shivered as she looked at the bogge-men they passed. "Ye see 'em like this sometimes - en th' woods, from a distance - jest standin' there, starin' at nothin'. Chief says et's because they ent made fer nawt but killin'. Nothin' en their heads, when they ent doin' that."

Mors gave a derisive snort, shaking his head as he did so, snow and frost riming on his thick black coat. "I HAVE SEEN THE TWISTED ONES DO SOME VERY STRANGE THINGS INDEED, WHILST ALONE," he rumbled. "I HAVE EVEN SEEN THEM TALKING TO EACH OTHER, IN SOME TONGUE I DO NOT KNOW. THEY ARE NOT SO EMPTY-HEADED. THOUGH I DO NOT KNOW WHY THEY SO OFTEN STAND SO STILL."

Martimeos could not help but feel a hot spike of fear in his heart, as they passed through these watching bogge-men. If the creatures knew what they planned, they could fall upon them in droves - they had passed by a dozen, at least, so far, and there were certainly more hidden by the swirling snow. And he could not help but feel a strange guilt, as well. Hadley had done this. Hadley had opened the path for him and his friends, and he was going to take advantage of it to kill the man. He knew it was a foolish thing to think, but he thought it all the same.

But the silent, cryptic stares of the bogge-men was not all the Killing Grounds had to offer them.

They were heard before they were seen. The silent snowfall slowly filled with the din of haunting moans and wails, ghostly, echoing cries of confusion, and painful, wracked sobbing. From all around the cries echoed, long and mad, and barely human. And then, staggering blindly through the snow, came the headless dead.

Emaciated and rotten, their skin gray and their furs tattered, the lost souls of Hadley's slaughter of the Crosscraw wandered, the space above the stumps of their necks where there heads should be a blue, shimmering fog. Far too rotted to tell who they were any longer - or even if they were man or woman - though many were far too small to have been adults when they were slain. Even with the cold, they filled the air with the dim, musty smell of death. There was seemingly no order to them - no rhyme or reason to the paths they took. They simply stumbled past in the snow, wailing and blind, barely able to support themselves. Only a few, at first. And then dozens, and over it all loomed the bogge-men, their slayers, ever-silent and watching with howling, burning eyes.

This was worse than the long-passed massacre they had witnessed when they met with Mors. Martimeos could hear it again, that long roar of rage in the back of his mind, as the dead lurched past. To think that he had even once, even for a moment, had a dark thought that the Crosscraw might have deserved this, filled him with a shame so strong he thought he might be sick. And he could feel it here, too, some strange stirring of the Art. Some echo of brutality and slaughter that had stained the land, and warped it somehow. It disturbed him; he had always thought of the Art as a perhaps fickle, but beautiful thing. But to feel the pull of it in response to such wickedness, to the blood, shook him to his core; it was like discovering a well-loved book was bound with human skin, or...

Or that an old friend had murdered children, something inside him whispered, as a smaller corpse wandered past, wailing.

"These seem a bit different, from the dead we saw in Twin Lamps," Kells said quietly. He had been using his spear as a walking stick, but now held it ready in both hands, prepared to skewerthe corpses should any of them come too close. "They...they talked, sometimes. It was as if they did not know they were dead." He looked ot Aela, questioningly, but the Crosscraw woman did not answer. She had shut her eyes, and drawn up a wolfs-head hood around her face, as if trying to block out the noise, and walked forward only by keeping her hand on Mors to guide her.

Elyse answered, instead. "Perhaps they begin that way," the witch whispered. Her eyes were wide and wild, staring at the dead who passed them by. "But perhaps, after a while, they realize they are dead. And...." She clutched a hand to her chest, and looked down at the ground. "Perhaps," she murmured, "That drives them mad."

It was impossible to tell for how long they marched through the bogge-men and the dead. Time seemed to stand still; it might have been half a day, or it might have been less than an hour. The world around them seemed to hum and grow dim; what little color they could see among the slow seemed to become duller. If not for Mors, who alone seemed not at all disturbed by what they saw, they might have lost thier nerve.

But eventually, the wails of the dead and damned began to fade; eventually, they spotted fewer and fewer bogge-men with eyes gleaming at them through the snowfall. They passed through the dead, their path leading them now into what must have once been a more dense area of the forest, before the land had been stained. The skeletal pine trees grew thicker here, their tangled roots hiding beneath the snow ever-ready to trip an unwary foot, and the land sloped up around them in sharp slopes; they walked in what had once been a creek bed, grown dry now.

It was here that they stopped to rest, once the last echoes of the wailing dead behind them could no longer be heard. They had not traveled far yet - Mors chastised them all for being so weak - but marching through the snow and bitter cold had already left them feeling exhausted, as if they had walked for two days straight already. "VERY WELL," Mors told them, as he lifted his snout to sniff at the air, pulling back his lips in a snarl as he did so. "BUT WE WILL NOT REST FOR LONG. THE WORLD IS VERY THIN, HERE."

There was no shelter to be had here, and so Kells laid out hides from his pack for them to sit upon beneath the bare branches of the pines, while Mors laid down in the snow, his bulk impervious to the cold. "No hope of making a fire, here," the soldier muttered, frowning upwards at the fat flakes still falling from the sky. "Too bad. I could use something to warm my bones."

"Martimeos and I could use the Art to boil some water," Elyse suggested, focusing the Art to melt the snow that had clumped in Cecil's fur as her familiar had walked through the snow drifts. She reached to her side, where she still kept her satchel of herbs, obtained all the way back in Silverfish. She gave a small smile as she remembered Minerva, the apothecary of the small village, who had given her the satchel. The herbs the stout old woman had given her had dwindled over the months on the road, but still some remained to make tea. "What say you, wizard? I - what is wrong?"

For Martimeos sat upon the hides, snow piling in his shaggy hair, green eyes staring wide and wild at the pipe he held in his hands. Flit sat upon his shoulder, nestled within his master's scarf. The wizard raised his eyes to meet Elyse, and she was struck by how much it felt as if he was staring right through her. "I am sorry," he sighed wearily. "I find it hard to concentrate. I do not think I could boil water, right now. I cannot even light my pipe."

"'Tis fine," Kells replied, laying his spear flat across his knees as he sat cross-legged upon his hides. "Hells, man, I know I couldn't concentrate after what we just walked through." He gave a hollow bark of a laugh. "I suppose I just didn't get enough of the headless dead in Twin Lamps. Fortune set me on your path so I could get more of them." He looked around, at the twisted trees that surrounded them, giving them a frown, and then set his sights on Aela. "I don't suppose you know where we are?"

Aela's face was hidden in the shadows of her wolfs-head hood, her hands twined and tugging at her red hair cascading out of it. "Th' land has changed much since last Ah were here," she answered, her voice small and trembling. "Or at least, th' forest has. Ah think Ah ken where we are, though. Nae so far from...from some o' th' clan barrows. We can make et tae them afore nightfall, an' they'd make good shelter."

"I MIGHT HAVE TOLD YOU THAT," Mors rumbled, turning his head to give Aela a fang-filled grin. "EVEN YEARS AFTER YOU WERE GONE, THE STINK OF YOUR FOXHAIR DENS LINGERS, EVEN BENEATH THE DEATH."

Aela was silent for a moment, and then she clenched her trembling fists. "Ye speak as ef ye dinnae stink yerself, Mors Rothach," she snarled, voice full of a sudden dark anger. "An' as fer death, yer breath reeks o' et. Nae surprise, how ye choose tae chew upon our corpses. Ach, what a mighty King ye are after all, feastin' on th' rotten scraps th' Bogge-King tosses ye after he's done wit' em."

Mors' one good orange eye burned like fire, and his half-dead face twisted into a hideous snarl. His claws pawed and churned at the earth beneath him. "WATCH YOUR TONE WITH ME, LITTLE ONE."

"How could Ah?" Aela whispered furiously. She raised her face so that her eyes were revealed beneath her hood, and the tear tracks that stained her cheeks. "Ah walk through mah dead folk, an' all ye hae fer them are insults, an..." The small burst of anger seemed to drain out of her, and despair claimed her features once more. "Ye might hae the smallest seed o' kindness en ye," she murmured.

A low growl began somewhere deep within Mors, and he opened his mouth to speak. But before he could, Elyse suddenly snapped, voice full of alert urgency, "Do you hear that? Be quiet. Hold your breath. Do you hear that?"

The argument forgotten, all grew still, even Mors. And in the still quiet that followed, there it was. Despite the fact that none of them breathed, they could hear it. Something drawing shuddering, choking breaths. Something that sounded disturbingly closeby, but no matter how their eyes strained, they could not spot anything amongst the dead trees.

Mors got to his feet. Drawing a deep breath, he let out an ear-shattering roar, one that caused Cecil to yowl and leap into Elyse's arms, his claws digging into her in panic. And when the last echoes of it faded away, the choking breath was gone. "WHATEVER IT IS," Mors said grimly, "I CANNOT SMELL IT. WE MUST MOVE."

Swiftly, and with nerves shattered, they gathered up the hides, stuffing them as quick as they could into Kells' pack. Mors had begun to move before they were even done, and they ran to catch up with the bear, fearful of being left alone in the forest.

As they continued on, they could not shake the feeling they were being watched. Martimeos felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, but whenever he glanced among the trees, he could see nothing but shadows and their bare, black trunks among the falling snow. But though Mors said he could not smell anything, it quickly becme apparent that something followed them. There was the occasional snap of a branch, or rustle amongst the stubby and withered underbrush, that made them all jump whenever they heard it. Elyse told Cecil to remain by her side, and Martimeos forbid Flit from flying off, unwlling to let their familiars stray too far from their sight.

The gloom of twilight came on early, with the cloudy and darkened skies, but the feeling of being followed did not leave. Martimeos bought out a torch and lit it as the darkness crept in around them, and they traveled within the small circle of its weak and flickering light. They huddled together, close to Mors' scarred bulk, finding the bear's stink more tolerable than the encroaching shadows.

"We ent far naow," Aela muttered, after yet another loud snap of a branch from somewhere out in the dark. "Close tae Ironclaw barrows. We can shelter there. We-"

"Hold," Kells said quietly, but with a distinct command to his voice. "Hold. Stop marching, and listen."

They drew to a sudden stop, under his order. And there, in the darkness behind them, they could hear it. The footsteps of something crunching through the snow, continuing for a few moments, before drawing to a stop as well.

"BRAVE OF THIS THING, TO STALK ME," Mors grumbled, turning around to stare into the dark with his one orange eye gleaming in the firelight. But he sounded troubled. "I STILL CANNOT SMELL IT."

And then, out from the darkness, came a voice.

"Kells, boy," it cried. "I'm in trouble. I need your help. It's so damn cold out here."

And Kells trembled, as if struck. For not only had it called out his name. It had done so in the unmistakable, gravelly, rough voice of Roark. "Black hells," the soldier hissed, clutching his spear tightly, his slate-gray eyes shocked and wide beneath his kettle-helm.

"Who es tha'...?" Aela asked. She looked around, trembling, at the shocked expression of the others. "Es et someone ye know...?"

"I'm stuck out here," came Roark's voice from the darkness once more. "Boot got stuck in a crevice, and I think I went and broke my ankle, like an ass. C'mon, boy. Help me out here."

Kells took a step towards the darkness, away from the protective light of Martim's torch, and only stopped when Mors let out a low growl. "THINK, MANLING," the bear snarled. "IS THIS SOMEONE THAT SHOULD BE HERE?"

Kells gave glanced back, his gray eyes wide and expression grim, and then he gave a weary sigh. He leaned his spear against his shoulder, spat, and called out into the darkness. "If you're really Roark," he cried, "Then tell me. What was the one thing I did that ever made you take the belt to me?"

There was a long pause from the darkness. "I don't have time for your stupid games," Roark's voice answered. "Come and help me." And then in a lower tone, that carried a hint of threat, "Come here."

"It's a simple enough question," Kells said softly. His hand tightened around his spear.

Another long, heavy silence from the darkness. "I asked you for help, boy," came Roark's voice. It changed to an inhuman snarl, "Is this the thanks I get for raising you?"

And then, the sound of something rushing forward through the snow. Something large.

In one fluid motion, Kells raised his spear to his shoulder and flung it into the dark. Something there howled in pain, a howl like no animal they had ever heard, a sound almost like heavy furniture being dragged across a wooden floor. Martimeos stepped forward with his torch, and from it shot an arc of flame into the darkness.

They caught only a brief glimpse of what it revealed. Something that looked like a gigantic head, with teeth the size of tombstones, eyes clouded and dead, and stringy, thin black hair plastered to dirty, pale skin. From the crown of its skull extended four long, thin arms that it walked upon, spindly fingers clawing upon the ground. It gnashed its teeth at them, pulling Kells' spear from its cheek, before the fire faded and it disappeared once more into the darkness.

"RUN," Mors said. And then he reared up on his hind legs, towering over them, and let out a mighty, bellowing roar.

And so they fled. Through bramble and branch they crashed as they ran, following the light of Martim's torch. Behind them, they could hear the sounds of Mors attacking the thing, whatever it was, the dull thud of his gigantic paws against the earth, and the night-shattering shriek of the creature.

"Et's close naow!" Aela cried, her voice full of panic, nearly breathless, as she ran. "Th' barrows are close by! We can maket et!"

Flit took to the sky, despite Martim's shout of warning, intent on finding this shelter. As they ran, the woods around them were filled with the sounds of cracking branches, the trees shuddering as something crashed into them, something that stayed in the darkness beyond the edges of Martim's weakly flickering torch.

Until, all at once, it came rushing at them, looming out of the shadows, and Elyse felt her heart drop into her stomach. Either Mors had lost his battle, or there was more than one of these creatures. For it was the gigantic head, its face a leering grin, limbs flailing wildly as it flung itself through the snow at them. At her.

All at once, she was on the ground, the thing's spindly fingers wrapped around her torso, crushing the breath out of her. She could hear shouts, and a panicked scream; she could feel the heat from a wave of flame that washed over the back of the creature's gargantuan skull, sent from Martim's torch. But all she could see was the face, as it loomed over her, enormous, moon-like eyes boring into her head. And as those eyes filled her vision, she felt her panic and fear drain away, replaced instead with a strange, sleepy tranquility. The thing's mouth, easily as big as she was, peeled back, revealing a lolling tongue and flat slabs of bone-white teeth, set into reddened, infected gums.

Fighting desperately against the deadly peace she felt, she clawed at her belt for the blade she kept there, and bought it up to defend herself, but one of the creature's flailing limbs knocked it from her hands, sending it spinning into the forest. She heard Cecil yowling and spitting, and as the creature's terribly human teeth bore down upon her, aiming to settle about her skull, she felt a wave of guilt wash over her. Poor Cecil would be all alone without her. She hoped Martim might take good care of her familiar, if the wizard managed to live.

And that was when she felt it. Burning a hole in the side of her tattered dress - the reaping-hook that Vincent, the mysterious farmer, had given her back in Twin Lamps. She had always kept it stowed away in one of her pockets; finding it oddly comforting. And it was not as if the thing gave off actual heat - instead, she was just suddenly, intensely aware of its presence. She did not know why she would think of it now; dull and useless as the thing was, it could not help her.

Above her, the face reeled backwards, and gave a strange, hacking roar, like a cough, at something to its side, though it maintained its grip on her. With nothing better to do, Elyse used the opportunity to scramble at her pocket, and retrieve the reaping-hook. Unthinkingly, she struck out with it, slashing at the creature's face as it turned back towards her, gagging against its fetid breath.

She expected the sickle to bounce off. Instead, it felt like it was cutting through thin air. She had time to wonder incredulously if she had somehow missed, before a terrible wound opened up. A deep, thick gash in a perfeclty straight line opened up, from the creature's upper lip to it's bottom; even its bare teeth were scored with a deep scratch. Blood welled up in the wound, and Elyse felt some of it splatter on her before the creature released her, reeling back, clawing at its face. It gave an awful wail as Aela, bow drawn, slipped an arrow between its fingers and into one of its silver, cloudy eyes. And then it fled back into the darkness, its thin cries fading into the distance with alarming rapidity; this thing - whatever it was - could move very fast.

Elyse found herself lifted bodily to her feet from the snow she lay in, and Martim's face swam into her vision, lit by the flickering torch he still held. "Fortune's mercy, you live," he breathed, his dark green eyes full of relief. "Are you injured? Can you still walk?"

"I...I'm fine," Elyse answered, through chattering teeth. With the creature's eyes off her, the strange calm she had felt burned out of her blood swiftly, leaving her with nothing but terror. Serpent's tits, she thought, that thing was going to chew my head off. Pop my skull between its teeth like a nut. She shuddered, and fought back the urge to be sick. "I may have some bruises, but...." She looked down at her hands, where she still held the sickle. It dripped with fresh, bright red blood. Martim's eyes followed hers, and when he saw the bloody sickle as well, he made a small sound of surprise and looked askance at her.

"We can talk later," Kells snapped at them. He had his shield in one hand, and his mace in the other, the latter of which was covered in a small amount of gore as well. "I do not think we are safe yet. Can you run, witch? If you cannot, I can carry you."

"No," Elyse replied, wiping the bloody sickle in the snow swiftly - Cecil, curling around her feet, had begun to sniff at it, and she did not want her familiar licking that creature's blood. "I can run, still. Let us go."

Through the woods they set off once more, though they did not run at such a breakneck, panicked pace as before. The woods around them were quiet, now - though there was still no sign of Mors. They did not have very far to go, besides. It was not long before Flit came winging back through the night, alighting on Martim's shoulder to burble in his ear about shelter up ahead. And shortly after that, the dense, dead woods gave way to a clearing.

The forest here had clearly been long-cleared by axes - many flat-topped stumps marked the ground. And as they walked past these, Martim's torchlight revealed a large, snow-covered hill that dominate the clearing; far too conical and even to be a natural hill, clearly manmade, dirt and stone stacked to an impressive height by the Crosscraw who had once lived here. And carved into its side, a dark hole served as an entrance within, Martim's torch revealing only a narrow dirt path leading within as he held it high.

"Ironclaw barrows," Aela murmured. She still held her bow in her hands, and kept a wary eye on the darkness surounding them. "Whatever yon....things were, they're too big tae make their way inside."

"That does not mean something else might not lurk within," Kells muttered, casting a dubious eye at the hole. "Do you think 'tis safe?"

"Ah dinnae think anythin' en th' Killin' Grounds es safe," Aela muttered in reply.

They were standing by the hole, still considering whether or not to go in, when from the darkness came a great crashing and snapping of branches. In panicked alarm, they raised their weapons, and Martim's Art made the flame on the torch leap high. But it was not one of the strange, giant-headed creatures that came out of the darkness; it was Mors. The bear breathed heavily, his hot breath blasting them as he drew near, and his snout dripped blood from a gash that ran across it, but he gave them all a feral grin, his orange eye burning in the torchlight. "OH, GOOD, YOU LIVE," he rumbled. "THERE IS MORE THAN ONE OF THOSE THINGS, OUT THERE."

"We know," Elyse said beneath her breath. Then she softened, and laid a hand on the bear's snout. As wicked and nasty as Mors could be, he had gotten that gash defending them. "You're injured. I know a little of healing with the Art, if you like."

"A SCRATCH," Mors replied, but he did not protest as the witch laid her hands upon him to work her Art. As she did, he eyed the hole into the hillside dubiously, and gave a derisive snort. "I WILL NOT BE FITTING IN THERE."

"What were those things?" Kells asked. "Why did it speak with Roark's voice....?" He blanched, gray eyes going wide. "That is not what he became after he..."

"SOMETHING, FROM THE LANDS OF DEATH. THOUGH I HAVE NEVER SEEN ITS LIKE BEFORE. THOUGH IT WOULD NOT BE THE FIRST I'VE SEEN THAT CAN MIMIC THE DEAD IN SOME FASHION."

Aela broke her eyes away from the darkness, and lowered her bow, letting the string go slack. "D'ye think ye drove em off?"

"I SLAYED A FEW OF THEM. BUT-" Mors slammed his jaw shut, and his head shot up, as there came a rustling noise from the darkness.

And then, a voice called out from the shadows. His own voice.

"OH GOOD OH GOOD. YOU LIVE OH GOOD LIVE GOOD," cried one of the creatures from the dark, in Mors' low, rumbling tones.

"We know. Injured. We know injured know heal Art know injured," cried another, and Elyse felt her skin crawl as she realized it was mimicking her. From the dark came strange hacking, coughing barks, almost as if the creatures were mocking them with laughter.

Mors gave a snarl that built into a low roar, and the sounds of the creatures barking quickly faded into the night. "I DO NOT THINK," he finished, "THAT THEY ARE GONE YET." He gave a nod of his shaggy head, towards the hole carved into the hillside. "I WILL GUARD THE ENTRANCE HERE. THESE THINGS MAY MOCK, BUT THEY FEAR ME. BUT YOU, I THINK, WILL BE SAFER INSIDE. I DO NOT SMELL ANYTHING STRANGE WITHIN."

Mors lay down beside the entrance, the giant black bear staring long into the woods, watchful for their pursuers. With one last, cautious look back, Martimeos held his torch up high, illuminating the dirt path that lay within the hillside. And so the four of them entered into the Ironclaw barrows.