SCIONS

by OVID LEMMA

CHAPTER ONE: RUINS

A time will come, long after you have passed, that no living person shall remember you and you are remembered only by the gods. And, as ages wax and wane, even they shall be forgotten.

-Selem il Bushard, 'Historics'

Nobody in the village of Rouentz remembered how the town got its name, and most of them would have called you mad if you told them. Rouentz came from 'ruins', but over the centuries everybody had forgotten. The people lived on the village's scant handful of streets - Bull the Blacksmith at the eastern extent, the Nessa's stables to the west, and the homesteaders dotted the countryside for a few miles beyond. In their town of five hundred, not one of them knew they sat atop the southern extent of the great fallen city of Astrillas - indeed, the long-dead grandfather of Old Albard was the last person to utter the name of that long-dead empire.

Clever Clarisse was the smartest in the village by most reckonings - she knew her letters and enough of the southern trade tongue to speak with the wandering monks. If you'd asked her, she might have waxed in vague terms about a long-lost empire, decadent and corrupt, cast down by God with his curses and plagues. If you'd asked Theodeus, he would have just shrugged. He wasn't the smartest in the village and some reckoned him the daftest.

Theo had fallen into the Charnel River as a child, breathed in too much water, and gone feverish the next day. He'd almost died, and maybe he should have - but a visiting southern monk with potions had prayed to his strange god, mixed a decoction, and brought Theo back from the brink of death. But he was never the same after that. He was mostly mute, prone to shaking spells, and easily confused. He was weak of mind, but not of body - Theo was also taller than young Albard and stronger than Bull, so perhaps it was best that he was a gentle, star-touched simpleton.

"Hey, Theo, seeing as how you've been staying in the loft, I wonder if you might help me with the new fence?" young Albard asked him - and Theo reckoned that was fair. Young Albard was kinder than most - he even gave Theo the family's dinner leftovers.

"Yeah," Theo said. "I help."

He helped young Albard for most of the day. The farmer would bring posts and beams over to Theodeus and point to a spot. It was Theo's job to dig out a hole and pound the posts in with Albard's huge leather mallet. Theo was a large man and strong, his muscles flexing in the midday sun, his sandy-brown hair flopping over his eyes with each mighty thump. He was so absorbed in his work that he didn't notice that Albard had fled, nor that a procession of men, some of them on horses, was advancing down the old trade road.

"Boy, he's a hell of a bastard, isn't he?" one of the men said.

"Hey, you!" the bearded man on the horse called out.

Theo didn't know they were talking about him - he was too busy pounding in the post. He didn't look up until the man on foot nudged him with the butt of his spear.

"Hey, you! You deaf?"

"No," Theo said.

"You know how to fight, son?" the man on the horse asked him.

"No," Theo said.

"Fuck it, it'll be interesting. Let's bring the bastard and see what Igna can do with him."

Before Theo quite knew what was happening, they'd thrown a loop of rope around his neck and pulled him along behind a horse. Even Theo knew he could take the loop off, just lift it over his head, but the men kept nudging him with their spears whenever he tried. So he walked with them, trailing behind the horse with a rough loop of hemp around his neck. They walked the patchy, gravelly stretch of road between Albard's homestead and Rouentz, only a mile or so, and when they got to the little wood-spiked palisade outside the town, the leader of the men demanded entrance.

"We twenty-three demand entrance to your village," the bearded man said.

"Fuck off," the gatekeeper said.

"We demand entrance or I'll ride back with five times this number and burn your whole village down."

It was a common enough negotiation tactic. The gatekeeper unbarred the door and cranked it open and the men went through, with Theo in tow. Twenty-three men wasn't so much. They'd eat and drink their fill, pack a few days' rations, and leave again, headed out for parts unknown. On their way back, they'd take livestock, too, so the smart money was on hiding your flocks and herds in the hills until after that.

In Theo's childhood, such marauders had been largely unknown - life along the frontier had its advantages. Over the decades, though, there had been some consolidation among the squabbling barbarian chiefdoms in the South, and now self-styled kings, barely more than petty warlords, made excursions to Rouentz and some leagues past with increasing regularity. It was only a matter of time before Rouentz fell into the orbit of one or the other 'king' - though, presumably, none of them thought that would happen tonight.

They took Theo to the old granary, out by the Nessa's, shoved him in, and closed the door.

"Stay here 'til I call for you, yeah?" the man said through the door.

"Yeah," Theo said.

He waited there for a long time. He could tell because the little pinprick holes of sky in the roof grew dim with the evening - he counted the holes. Theo couldn't count past his fingers but, once he got to ten, he could just start over again. He caught some rats and left their bodies by the door - if he caught rats, sometimes Fra Hollen would give him food or clothes or even beer. Sometimes, he drank beer with Theo and talked and talked - and Theo liked to listen and Fra sure liked to talk. Theo was thinking about beer and making another go at counting the deep-blue divots of light in the granary ceiling when he heard the cracking and screaming.

+++++

In retrospect, the most surprising bit of the attack was that the cracking wood, roaring fire, and sound of clashing metal was louder than the screaming and moaning of people. When Theo forced his way out of the granary, the raid was already well-underway. The palisade had been breached, the great-hall's roof was ablaze, and more soldiers than Theo had ever seen were rampaging through the town. Granted, that was only fifty or sixty, but Theo couldn't count that high and it certainly seemed like a lot.

"Help!"

That plea came from Clarisse's daughter, Larian - fifteen, clever like her mother, and being chased by an angry man with an axe. Theo didn't really know Larian - what did he have in common with a clever teenage girl? - but he could tell the man was up to no good. When Theo stepped between the man and Larian, the raider took a swing with his axe. Theo caught it by the haft, yanked it from the man's hand, and swung it as hard as he could. That was pretty hard. He'd had a poor grip and he struck the man with the flat of the axe-head, but from the crunch of bone and splat of blood, he knew he'd badly hurt the raider.

Theo cried out, worried that he'd get in trouble for hurting the man. It was bad to hurt people. Indeed, a lancing pain seared through his shoulder a moment later, shaking his upper body - he'd just been struck with an arrow, though it hadn't gone in very far. The man who'd shot him was a bit confused when Theo turned around and started for him - usually, people went down after a shot like that. But not Theo. He grabbed the man's bow, cracked him over the head with it, and then throttled him against the stables wall with his uninjured arm. He'd got three or four really good slams in when something cracked against the back of Theo's head and his vision erupted into a thousand brilliant colors.

His limbs were twitching, and Theo was stumbling. He was barely aware of his surroundings, barely aware of it when he hit the fence and flipped over it, landing on his face. Barely aware of it as he stumbled off, down the hill and through the trees and off into the darkening evening. Eventually, he collapsed, his limbs twitching, and Theo was only aware of the passage of time and the flashes of pattern and color dancing across his vision.

"I think he's dead," the boy said.

"He's not dead. He's breathing," the girl said.

"But he's dying," the boy said.

"He's not. He's waking up," the girl said.

Theo awoke to find himself in a moonlit glade with three other people - Larian and two boys from the village. One was Cano, who was Alpo's son, and the other Theo didn't recognize. He struggled to his feet and touched the ache on his head, feeling sticky blood but not too much of it. Somebody had removed the arrow from his shoulder and the bleeding had stopped, though it was still pretty sore. Through the trees, he could see the remnant fires of the attack and hear the whoops of raiders and the occasional scream.

"Sorry," Theo said to Larian.

"Sorry? Sorry for what?" Larian asked. She was tall for a girl and slim, her dark eyes taking everything in.

"Hurt men," Theo said.

"Is... is he a raider?" the boy who Theo didn't know asked.

"No, he's from around here. I think his name's Theo - people get him whenever they need heavy things lifted," Larian said. "When mom got her bookshelf, so heavy I can't even budge it, he carried it the whole way from Vernis Woodman's and up the stairs."

"So... do we, like, fight back?" Cano said.

Larian shrugged. "I think we should get away from the village, at least for now. Maybe we can come back in a few days and see what's happening."

"But... everybody in there," Cano said. "They could die... we should do something. We should try to stop them."

"Three scrawny teenagers and a mute with a head wound?" Larian said. "Our best bet is to get away, find help, and then come back. We're not twenty yards from the old woodsroad. I think that goes to Nortsair if we follow it long enough. What do you say, Theo?"

"Away," Theo said. He didn't want to get in trouble for hurting more people and, he suspected, that would probably happen if he saw that things now happening in the Rouentz.

"Fine, you three can go," Cano said. "I'm going to sneak back into town and kill as many of the bastards as I can."

Before Larian could object, the boy jogged away through the woods and toward town. The girl gave Theo's sleeve a gentle tug and they followed after the other boy - he'd already started through the woods.

"My name's Heath," the boy said. "My pa's a proper woodsman - not like Vernis - so I know these woods like the back of my hand... ow!" He rubbed his forehead, having bumped into a branch.

"How well do you know the back of your hand?" Larian asked.

"It's not usually nighttime when I do this."

They continued on for three or four minutes, Heath slipping through the woods along a path so faint that Theo couldn't make it out. Larian followed close behind, shuffling and rustling through the underbrush, and Theo stomped after them, far louder still. He took in the woods around them, watching the wildlife cower and skitter in their wake - ground-squirrels, foxes, a few deer, and a brindle bear, to name a few. But before they went far, he stopped, for he heard somebody calling after them.

"Guys! Guys! Where are you?"

"Cano," Theo stated.

Larian nodded, and they turned back for a minute or two to track the boy down. They found Cano perhaps half-way back to their starting location, a few yards off the path and desperately scrambling through the woods. He clutched at his side, but Theo couldn't see any blood there - though, he supposed, it was pretty dark out. Maybe he just couldn't see it.

"What happened?" Larian asked him.

"I started to go back..." Cano said, gasping for breath. "Patrols... I ran into a patrol, and they chased. I think I lost them. Winded myself on a log... gimme a sec..."

"If there are patrols, we don't have a sec," Larian said.

"Come on, then. The path's easy. Follow me," Heath said. "We can stop at Mother's Meadow."

+++++

Mother's Meadow was a little glade perhaps a mile into the wood. It was nighttime with a smattering of clouds, but both moons were high and full in the sky, so there was enough light to see by. Theo sat himself upon a log and counted stars. He could only count to ten, but he could count to ten many, many times.

There were stones in the meadow delineating a garden and a stone house, its roof half caved-in. A witch had lived there when Theo was a boy - or so it was said - but she'd died or left many years ago. Cano paced the little garden path a few times, occasionally rubbing a his side where he'd run into the log, before composing himself and sitting cross-legged in the ankle-high grass. Theo's own shoulder felt odd, and he realized with a start that the clever girl, Larian, had been picking at it.

"There are some herbs still in the garden if you want me to prepare a poultice," she said.

Theo shrugged, mostly because he only half-understood what she was saying. "Ok," he said eventually.

"Should we stay here tonight?" Cano asked.

They decided not to, that it would be best to keep going until they found somebody. Heath insisted that they could make it to Nortsair before too long if they kept following the road, and that sounded good to the rest of them. Maybe they'd be sleeping in beds or, barring that, a hay loft before the night was through. They continued along the wooded trail, through the deep of the forest and past increasingly many old stone ruins, white and gray, limestone and marble and granite, all dusted with moss. When they reached a great clearing in the woods Heath cursed and stomped around a bit.

"We took a wrong turn and went north instead of north-northwest," he muttered. "These are the Barren Bones."

The 'Barren Bones' were a rocky expanse of earth barely touched by the forest. Instead, numerous ancient marble buildings stood there - temples? Civic buildings? Palaces? It was hard to say what was what, except that they were grand, old, and badly deteriorated. It was more large buildings than Theo had ever seen in once place, though they were mostly fallen-down.

"We should stay here and continue in the morning," Cano said. "If you can't guide us through, we're liable to get ourselves killed."

"We can't stay here," Heath said. "It's haunted - that's why trees can't grow here. Not even little bushes grow here..."

"Ghosts aren't real," Larian said. "Right?"

"Real," Theo said - he'd seen them before, several times, though never more than a few days after a person died. "None here," he concluded. Whoever had died here had done so long ago.

The four of them slept under the crumbling dome of an ancient temple to a forgotten goddess, her likeness still visible in relief upon the great central stele: stern but beautiful, empty eyes looking into the infinite, her head emblazoned with a crown of stars. Theo gathered a bundle of dried grass to use as a pillow and lay there, counting the stars in her crown as he drifted off to sleep. He didn't awaken until well after dawn, when Bestel Myrdon's banging and cursing snapped him back into the world. 

OvidLemma

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