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I rubbed the piece of map between my fingers, hidden somewhere within the haystack I rested on, nurturing and laying and handling in gentle. My own egg of hope. And I hated myself for even buying into the fantasy Chaucer offered. But I couldn’t help it.
“Are you paying attention?” Ritcher asked.
I let go. Raised both my hands and put them on my knees.
“I got your wine.” Ritcher offered a metal cup through the bars. “Make sure you give it back, I don’t want you carrying a weapon.”
“The only person I’m going to hurt is myself.” The scent of the cup went up my nose and sent the burn down my throat. One sip is all it took for my face to contort and turn to the side.
“Good, isn’t it?”
“If you want to die early.” I said. “I can’t keep the cup?”
His eyes went left to right and his hands quivered a bit.
“No. You are the last person allowed a weapon.”
I put the cup forward and he snatched it from my hands. Ritcher, wearing what looked like a one piece beige tunic and me still in my rags, with the water drips of a low-hung corrugated ceiling dripping on us.
“Why’s that?”
He poured another bit of wine and handed it to me, my reflection red in the glass.
“You became a general of the Flock for a reason. I don’t know the specifics of it, but apparently you were very good in battle. Very, very good.”
“And now I can’t even wipe my ass with my hand.” It was still bandaged, still to my rear and half-enclosed. “So much for reputation, huh?”
“It wasn’t reputation. It was fact. They called you the wind of the west.” He said. “Sylas was the wind of the east. You took his title.”
My lips touched the rim. My face went sour, I pushed the cup away from me and stuck out my tongue.
“Anything else you can tell me?” I asked.
“Only rumors, which I’m not interested in. I need the facts.”
I sat down in front of the bars with my body resting on my hams and my face focused on the scurrying centipedes that went crack to crack. The blur of their small legs a bit mesmerizing with and the voices too brighter, and the colors less dead than usual. I took another sip. Then another. The cold and fecund air went warm. I put the back of my palm against my cheeks and smiled. Hot.
“I’ve got a question for you, Ritcher.” I said.
“What’s that?”
“You telling me the truth?”
“The truth about what? Your history, the book?”
“No, the truth about you.” I sipped. “Ritcher Wolfe. Chasing after some loose perpetrators. Prince of the…rose…what part of the country is that?”
“I reside over the Southern continent.” He crossed his arms. “What are you getting at?”
“Nothin’, nothin’. I’ve just been around a lot of people who lie is all.” It felt like I couldn’t wipe the rictus from my face, and the wine kept slipping from my mouth and spilling on the floor each time I tried to drink. “Shit.”
“I knew bringing the wine was a mistake.” He shook his head.
I covered my mouth, the red kept crawling out as I giggled.
“This feels great.” I said.
“Stop blabbering inanities and get reading.” He offered one hand, I put the wine in it and like a lever, out came his other hand with the book.
“Ah. The adventures of Vicentius.” I said. “And Sylas. And Obrick.”
Ritcher’s face widened and held for a few moments, his mouth opened but no words came out. He subsided and returned hunched in his seat.
“Obrick?” He asked.
“Hmm.” I put a finger on my chin. “I forgot who that is.”
“J-Just read.” He said.
What was that all about? It made me laugh, that funny face he just did. I held the book with my both hands (it didn’t even feel broken. God damn.)
My body contorted to the corner like a brown recluse setting web, my head peering up from the edges of the cover just to look at Ritcher and laugh.
“Stop acting stupid.” He said.
“Alright.” I said. “Alright. I hope it’s good today.”
My time in the farms;
Savara 2nd, 1125 Dom.
Reading the books Vicentius offered has done me wonders. It’d been a good distraction from meanness around me. I don’t hold the delusion you’ll ever receive this anymore, J.P. So I can no longer write to you in mind. And yet this words yet may go unspoken, I speak anyway. I only write to assure a proper chronicle of my search for a boat. Because writing has become my only friend.
Well. Maybe aside from Old Chet.
I walked out of my cart carrying a bag of grains in front of my stomach with both arms clutched underneath like an infant. Down the road, towards the kitchen, all round me the fleet of men and their grimaces and their cough-cut laughter as they approached me. One of them, I couldn’t quite see his face, bumped into my shoulder. My body spun, the grains flew, I struck a horse next to me. I fell on my knees, the horse releasing a neigh and extending its hood. The grains were seeded onto the floor, small little needles of flour to be ground still yet that now, on the brown dirt, looked like prickly brown weeds. Behind me the men laughed. Around me, the men passed their glares in the corners of their eyes. It was an inbetween state for me, that I wasn’t even much of a laughing stock as I was a diseased man. That my condition was not to be mocked, but pitied.
I heard the words behind me.
“Poisaru.”
Pussy in Sylian; their language, or at least what I’d named it.
Among other insults, Bisaru was also common especially in the serving station where I’d spend most of my evenings.
Bisaru was another word for nagger and the closest thing to “bitch” I’d found. And apparently it didn’t come from the dog, but rather the bird. A special breed called the Bisa, who yelps for a mate. Thus the name for “complainers” like me; Bisaru. I’d learned a lot in a month.
Next to me the wheels ran steady and well-greased as we went through the flat terrain of the thin road. The thin black trees had lost their brood a few miles ago and no longer were branches over me, black fingers down against my scalp. We’d come to a place of giant pines and we’d continued until now. The wheel stopped. The horses huffed drivers wrapped a firm grip around their leather handles. On my person was half the bag of grain, and to my side to escort me half the way to the kitchen was Old, crippled Chet. Men came running past us over a hill that was about ten carts ahead of us. It was over a small bend, where the sun was barely approaching the tent line of every canvas top that settled stiff into the road. They ran fast, weapon clinging around their waist.
“What’s up there?” I asked. “They’re acting like they’ve discovered America.”
“A-me-ri-ka? Huh?” Old Chet asked.
I put the flour against on his waist. He gasped at the sudden drop.
“You son of a-” Breath left him, I grabbed the spine of his chair and dug my heels deep into the dirt and pushed him all the way up the hill, past the carts where the drivers stood raised high with their hands over their eyes and their faces with the slight smile. We came up, Old Chet’s chair sounding like a broken gear waiting to collapse. Squeaky, aching. Over the grassy knoll, around the line of men, our bodies dug into the group by the edge of a wooden blockage that headed down slope.
My head stuck through underneath a man’s arm pit, a smell that made my throat gag. I closed my eyes and shook my head and when they re-opened there it was like a damn oasis in a desert.
Canthus. The village in the heartland of Mervo (the quadrant I had the displeasure of living in). A village intermediary between Lao Lo and Carthius (or what’s left of it).
But to call it a village was a stretch. It was more a bastard birth of old and new. Farmlands sparsed outside a settlement witch rich and even-toned white brick roads and houses. It looked like a drain, honest. Like every crown of vegetable and every caged encampment of cows fed in some way or another to the distillation and squeeze of the clean brick, clean people’d streets. Even from this high distance I could tell it, I’d live a life like that. A beautiful city growing center to the sprawl of base farmers and farm lands. A clocktower was midconstruction at the epicenter, its giant hands were visible even from the miles away and above.
“Canthus?” I asked.
“Do I look like the driver? How would I know?” Old Chet’s arms flexed underneath the weight of the bag. “And get this shit off me.”
“Right. Sorry.”
We’d made camp a hundred meters from the northern side of the city, at a point where the cheap fencing and cheap chicken coop string ran out and where the long wooden logs of a tethered wooden wall matt met. They were pointy at their ends at the tops and interred deep into the floor, newly interred I might add. It was a point after the slope, where the hills went flat and from what I understood where they would remain flat for miles ahead. Behind the farm and cheap fence were the dirt roads that led deep into the city, a city-heart so deep we couldn’t even spot a crowd walking through the muddy roads.
We were practically in the boonies, with tall grass up to my knees that itched and made me look shorter than I was. Five seven is average. I think.
I pressed down on the kitchen cart wheels, they were firm and the wooden block for a brake kept stiff. Again, I shook. Not a budge. The horses were all collected and fed and pushed into a little encampment of high fence in one of the farms. From a distance I could spot them, if I just narrowed my eyes and blocked the sun with my hand.
I looked past the kitchen to the establishment mid-swing; archery boards with fresh wounds on their red spots, benches and logs and a growing pit with spit-roast mid construction. I guess that meant I’d be making pig tonight. The camps were set in even rows.
“Where you headin’ off, we gotta get dinner ready.” Old Chet said.
“I need to talk to someone.”
I arrived near Vicentius’s camp, the one marked with a zero who only had the crow for his sigil and animal of choice. Which was strange, considering he looked more like a dove than anything else. A bronze colored man with black spots turned his head around the corner behind a tent. He looked at me, struck down with his hammer and missed a nail and the wooden board. He yelped. Threw the hammer. Threw the board and nail.
These were the idiots I’d traveled with.
No more with these fools. No more with the faces of pity and contempt and curiosity. No more with the Flock. I saw Vicentius in the field, helping with a tent, rubbing the sweat off his face with his scarless arm. He held a wooden post, fit it in a hole and kept still as another man filled the slot. The mounds still moist and dark underneath his black leather shoes. Soveros stood behind him, wearing the same outfit he always had, the dark cape and the puffed neckline and the wide pouldrons of metal and the same scowl, without even a smidgen of intent of helping. Both his hands were behind him.
“Vicentius.” I said.
“Commander Vicentius.” Soveros said.
I looked up to him, scowl matching scowl.
“General of War, leader of the Flock, master of all, Vicentius. Please, god king. Could I speak to you?” I said.
“Is this your form of humor, worm?” Soveros asked.
Vicentius chuckled.
“What do you need, Virgil?” He said.
“Vicentius. Vincent. Can I call you Vincent?” I asked.
“Vincent?” He stood up. “Vincent. Vincent… I like that.”
“Vincent.” I took a side step away from Soveros, closer and inches away from Vincent. “Can I talk to you alone?”
Two men working on sawing wood looked at us, their instruments up in the air. Soveros turned to them. They jumped and started sawing the table too. His neck slowly turned back to us, Vincent and myself.
“Certainly. Leave us Soveros.” He said.
“You’re supposed to be giving order, not taking them.” Soveros said.
“And yet you would command me, here and now?” He asked.
“No, commander. I advise, though.” Soveros bent his head.
“And I’ll order you. Give us some space.”
“As you say, Commander.” Soveros walked away. His shoulder bumping into mine. A few other men around us looked at each other then to the fading silhouette of Soveros and went his direction. In the immediate vicinity, around the corners of white-tented camps, the curious faces mounted each other like totem poles.
“He doesn’t like me.” I said.
“Does anyone?” Vincent said. “You haven’t made any progress with the men.”
“It’s not like they’ve given me a chance.” I said.
“Most men don’t get chances, they have to make them.” He said.
“They won’t even let me make one.”
Vincent grabbed a hammer and nailed in a stake to wrap rope around.
“We take anyone willing to come with us, Virgil.” He said. “And of the people most readily able and willing, are soldiers and warriors. Men with full hearts ready to fight demons, monsters. There are few positions where men don’t fight, especially young men. Blacksmiths, cooks, artisans of all kinds are rare here and earn that position after having fought.”
“What’s wrong with me being a cook?”
“It feels undeserved. These people risk there lives and here you come.” Vincent said. “And when you do fight, it’s against the Flock. You almost stabbed a man, remember?”
“Like I said. He’s the one who attacked me first-”
“With a knife, right?” He extended his palm “Can I borrow it?”
I handed it to him, he dug into the threads of rope, and snipped the strays by the ends of a tied knot then handed it back.
“I don’t want to cause trouble and I haven’t for a month.” I said. “I wanted to talk to you about that threat you gave me a month ago.”
“It wasn’t a thread, more like a contract that you signed in oath with spoken word.”
“Yeah. Whatever you want to call it. I can’t seem to find anyone to let me in.”
“We have a hunt coming up, I’m sure they’ll open up with any help they could get. You just need to be willing-”
“I’m not. That’s the thing.” My hands drooped to my side. He turned around with his brows raised, that he lowered into calm stoic face. His big white eyes went soft, the creases of his flesh eased until he seemed almost cherub in appearance. Vincent sucked in his lower lip, faced the ground and brought back his face with a half-smile.
“That so?” He asked.
“Yeah. I won’t be sticking around. I’m leaving.”
“Where to?”
“Lao Lo. I need to find a boat. It’s the closest coast city, right?”
“Virgil, I don’t think you’re going to find the type of boat you need.” He said. “These stories of your foreign land. America…I just don’t think there’s anyway…I’m just not quite sure how you’d go back. Or even if you came here the way you think you came.”
I scratched my neck and felt my body tingle and my fingers twitch.
“It would take an extra month assuming you allowed me to stay.”
“You can stay, you just need to join proper-”
“I can’t stay.” I said. “A man’s gotta know his place and it’s not here. It’s not even in this land, Vincent. My home is far, far away and I don’t plan to wait any longer to get there.”
Vincent raised himself and shook my hand, clasping my arm as he reached in and pulling me in tight.
“I believe that you believe you can find home, Virgil.” He said. “Whether that be here or elsewhere. I won’t keep men who don’t want to stay. Every man knows his place, I just hope you know yours.”
“I do.” My home existed. It exists. It was in Los Angeles. A nice three story home in Beverly hills with as many long and wide roads to drive myself and all the women I could fit in a two seater. It was in my kitchen on drunk nights. It was alone in my room, away in my yacht. It was somewhere else, far away from wheel-cleaning and potato-peeling. Far away from the stuff that whithered my fingers and my soul.
Everyone looked at me. I’d been looking down before Vincent put his hand on my shoulder and let go.
“I need to get out of this nightmare.” I said.
“You remind me a lot of myself.” Vincent said. “Maybe that’s why I’m so lenient with you.”
“I just don’t see how we’re any way close to each other. You’re much more…”
“Funny and handsome?” Vincent laughed.
“Disciplined.” I smiled.
“May I ask if you don’t mind. Do you have any supplies? Weapons? A horse?” He asked.
“Old Chet gave me some money for helping him around. I aim to buy a horse, he said they’re cheap here. Maybe I’ll work for a couple days, make some money that way.” I said. “I’ll find a way.”
“You’ll need to hire protection. We can-”
“I doubt anyone in this camp would protect me.” I laughed. His face saddened.
He looked out the distance, at the horizon, out to a bundle of trees and the thick forest with the spurs of animals shook the green tops.
“Is that how it is then…” His face eased and each long breath made my own growing pangs calm to stillness. It looked like he wasn’t even staring into the forest, but rather past it to a horizon far away, in a place not reachable by any stretch or any road. Vincent put his hands on his hips, his chest bust stuck out and his back straightened.
“I believe in good investment.” He said. “You have good instincts, Virgil. You’re not as dumb as they say, you have a good sense of awareness. These are things I value and things I want.”
“Well, I’m sorry but-”
“I’m the type of person that gets what I want. The type of man who gambles and compels and I’m willing to gamble on you.”
“I just don’t see that-”
“Virgil. I will give you two hundred silver, right here right now.”
The hairs behind my neck rose.
“What’s the deal?”
“You stick around for one week. That’s how long we’ll be here. You stick through the attack.”
“What attack?”
He looked away, towards the city now.
“You don’t need to fight, I just need you there to see. Maybe then you’ll understand.” He said. “Can you do that? For two hundred silver? It’d get you exactly what you want.”
“Why are you going so far?”
“I don’t know.” He said. “Maybe I just like you and your crazy stories of your otherworld. Maybe I just like having a lackey around to bully.”
I chewed the inside of my mouth and bit my fingers and shook in place, staring left and right to the many faces now sticking out of gaps in the tents or around the corners or around the high-stacked carpentry tables with the film of saw dust still raw on their surfaces.
“Fine. Just a week? Just long enough for the attack?”
“Yes.” He said.
“Deal.”
