The shadows of the forest pressed in on him with all the weight of the dead. Long limbs cast longer shadows, rustling leaves gave voice to the ghosts that passed on the wind. No birds were singing. Without them, with only silence, the woods weighed twice as heavy. Thomas Warner did his best to ignore all this. He played the same message in his mind, over and over again.
Keep running.
It was hard to keep running when your legs were on fire. They’d cramped up half a mile back, cramped up something fierce, but Thomas had not stopped. Now there was a burning deep within. Every sinew was moaning, screaming—begging him to stop and rest. His eyes wanted to rest, too. They kept drooping closed, and he had to force them back open. Otherwise he’d have run into a tree or something. He couldn’t stop, not yet. Not until he was safe. If he stopped, he’d never start again.
Keep running, or it’ll catch you.
He should have made it back to camp ages ago. It wasn’t that far, not after he’d made it back out of the dark forest. There were only supposed to be a few thin clusters of trees, lining the valley and leading him on to the comfort of home. Oh, to be again in sight of the bluff upon which the Advanced Party’s camp lay, to have the high hills pressing him close on all sides.
Those same hills had been far from comforting this morning. He’d joked with grey old Corporal Bartley about it. The slope down from the camp was pleasant and gentle, even if the grass was muddy. But at the base of that declivity, following the winding path of a feeble stream, the hills rose high enough to humble any man. They closed in suddenly, the metres closest to the ground impossibly steep. Three of them had set out together, Thomas and Corporal Bartley and Eilidh Cailie with her silly pink hair. The three of them had been forced to walk single-file, their arms tight at their sides. As if the very land was trying to lead them that way.
It would be hard to get lost in that pass. You went in one end and came out the other, and unless you had rope and carabiner there were no detours. If he could just find those hills, get round the far side to the slopes where it all widened out, he’d surely be able to see the welcoming campfire. No doubt Liz Hamish was there cooking up some rations. James Wilding would have a flask of ale in his hand as he regaled them all with another unlikely anecdote from the life before. Adela Rice would probably be waiting on hand with a taller tale to top it.
All that was waiting for him. He just had to find the pass.
Ahead, the trees came to an end. Starlight was beyond them, unblemished, a field of white speckles in an endless black. Two moons rose together through the sky, one the colour of mint and the other the colour of parchment. The ground fell away, yielding to a lower valley. Thomas could see a great black tor rising high above a meadow of brown grass. A score and a half nubbins were strewn across the meadow, serfs of stone bowing their heads in reverence to the great king on the horizon. That was where he headed. His feet had decided that for him. He could take cover behind the rock, and get some rest, and hope that the thing behind him might give up and go away.
He blamed Cailie, really. She was the one who saw the bloody light. If she’d just kept her mouth shut, they’d never have even known it was there. They’d have gone in some other direction, and everything would have been uneventful, and right now Thomas would be dining and laughing with the others around the fire. But no, Cailie just had to say something. And now she was dead, and Bartley too. Both of them were dead and Thomas was who knows where.
Oh, this wasn’t what he’d signed up for at all. Essegena was the final and greatest beast the Unity sought to conquer. The pioneers would be heroes, royalty, living the life of luxury. His definition of ‘luxury’ didn’t stretch to running terrified across a strange land for his very life.
The hooded man had promised better—the one who called himself the Ealdor. He told Thomas about the bitter past, the sour present, the sweet future that Essegena held. And Thomas had believed him.
What a fool he’d been. Where was he, now? Some fine corner of the universe he’d picked to die in.
There were flowers growing here, clusters of them loitering in the shade of the nubbins. He could see some starfire, a few cymes of amaranth. Some unfamiliar flowers grew too, blue things on broad stalks with petals of white that looked uncannily like eyes. They watched him with silent judgement. He took shelter behind a particularly big crop of rock, granite with cracks tearing its surface asunder. If he squeezed, perhaps... yes, he could just about tuck himself into the crack. He wriggled about until the nubbin was his shell, and at last he could stop for a rest.
He must have gone the wrong way at some point. None of this was familiar. The sun had been high in the sky the last time he’d seen a familiar landmark, and night had long since fallen. He’d left his helmet on the ground, back in that valley full of colourful trees. Bartley had done the same. Neither was in the mood to subject himself to the restrictive form of the helmet once Cailie had said the air was safe to breathe—and if they got turned around on the way back, the helmets would be a good landmark. They were heavy, unwieldy things. The grey metal loved to reflect the full blaze of the sun. There was no way to miss them.
Bartley was the one who’d suggested it. Thomas was always in awe of people like Bartley, the people who had the ability to think of simple ideas like that. He could never do it. Every time he tried to think of something clever, his brain insisted on over-complicating things, until his thoughts were so complex he couldn’t understand what he was thinking about. But that was why Bartley was a Corporal, and he never would be.
Bartley would probably have been able to find the helmets on the way back.
Keep running, or it’ll catch you.
In another life, everything might have been different. Bartley might have been stood just an inch or two to the left when Cailie died. He’d have missed the little rabbit-hole in the dirt, and he wouldn’t have rolled his ankle. He’d have spotted the helmets and led Thomas back the right way. Instead he’d fallen. Thomas had been just a shade ahead of him when it happened. He could see Bartley’s shadow beside him, could see the Colonel crumple. When he’d turned to help, the old soldier had been clutching his ankle with a grimace on his face.
“Don’t stop, Warner, you damned fool,” he’d screamed. “Keep running, or it’ll catch you.”
That was the only invitation Thomas had needed. He hadn’t looked back since, or allowed himself a second’s pause. Even when he heard the explosion, and Bartley’s sudden cry, he’d kept on going. Otherwise he’d be dead.
His legs were aching badly now. They’d seized up properly, as if out of spite that Thomas kept them working for so long. We’re not going anywhere now, they’d be saying, if legs could somehow talk, so you’ve had that.
Melanie had been the one he’d always gone to when his legs cramped. She knew just the right way to massage them so that the pain would subside straight away—a method she’d learned from a dry old crone in the badlands of Kelsiern. She’d laugh as Thomas moaned in pain. Her laugh was a salve. When duty kept them apart, just the memory of Melanie was enough to make him feel better. But Balking had taken the real Melanie, and left the memories too painful to ever revisit her ghost.
He’d had a dream of Melanie last night. It was the first time he’d thought about her in seventeen years. She was all in white, with a scar bisecting her face from forehead to cheek. One eye was cloudy and blind. He’d tried to talk to her, but she wouldn’t answer him.
Wouldn’t, or couldn’t.
She watched, and she smiled, and then he asked her if it had hurt. He had to know that she’d died quickly, that she hadn’t lingered on in suffering. The question would have been better left unanswered. Melanie responded by tracing the scar on her face, running a finger from point to point, and when she was done it opened up, revealing seared flesh and bone and brain where there should have been a scalp.
And Melanie was only at Balking because of him. Her quiet homestead had been given over to Surnett’s flames, and she might have died a milkmaid in obscurity were it not for Thomas. He’d been there. Pulled her out from the blazing timbers. He ought to have stopped at that. But the ghosts of dying men had shattered his young heart, and he’d filled his head with songs and believed Melanie could mend him.
Instead, her own ghost had added to the fury.
Even after he’d woken up, that broken image hadn’t left him.
He’d been quiet all through the breakfast, had barely recognised the taste. Maybe Liz had done a good job, maybe she hadn’t. All he’d been able to think about was Melanie. When Lieutenant Bennett had given the order to form up in threes, Thomas had wandered idly towards the nearest group. It was his misfortune that he’d been sat beside Eilidh Cailie while he ate his food. Cailie, with her tacky hair and her angel face. He might have tried to kiss her in another life, but in this one she sickened him. Her voice simpered. Her jokes grated. That Meneges lilt she spoke with made Thomas want to punch something. Who did she think she was, to swan about like the Lieutenant’s golden girl? Everything she did, Melanie had done—and better.
Cailie was given the responsibility of holding the atmospheric probe, in the way that pretty girls like her were always given any jobs that combined ‘easy’ and ‘important’. It meant she got to spend the day waving the probe about, reading out the numbers on the display, and generally lording it over those who hadn’t been chosen for the task. That should have been satisfying enough for her. There was no need to bring up the light, and lead them closer to it. But she had.
“It could be anything,” Thomas had said. “It’s probably the sun.” What was the point in getting sidetracked by a light? Better just to get on with what they were supposed to do and get back to the camp, where there was good stuff to drink.
The battle had been lost as soon as Cailie had mentioned it. Bartley was intrigued. He’d have been interested in what she had to say even if she just wanted to discuss the green of the grass. His prime was behind him, and most of his middle-age too. If he hadn’t already tied a beautiful woman to marriage by now he probably never would. What a surprise his dick clouded his thinking.
“What could be causing it?” Bartley had asked.
Cailie had waggled her probe towards the light, because of course she’d take the excuse to use it. “I’m getting no anomalies,” she’d said, in what she probably thought was an important-sounding voice. “It’s just a forest.”
The light had seemed to come from the thickest part of the forest. The trees were so densely packed here that daylight barely reached the floor. Without the light, they might have needed their torches to see in places. With the light they needed nothing. Thomas was loath to admit that his interest had been piqued, but Cailie had definitely stumbled upon something strange. As they drew closer, it became clear that the pulsing light had coalesced around an ancient tree. Once, it might have been a great willow. Leaves had long abandoned this one; the trunk was gnarled and the branches petrified. Dead bark peeled off arthritic joints. The glow was strongest at the heart of the tree, almost blinding as it peeked through knots in the ancient wood. Even the extremities had a pale shimmer to them. It felt somehow spectral.
“That’s definitely not the sun,” Cailie had said glibly. “The sun doesn’t shine through trees.”
“Nothing shines through trees like that,” Corporal Bartley had responded.
“Maybe we should report it to Lieutenant Bennett?”
Cailie had given Thomas a withering look, like he was an idiot with an absence of imagination. “And tell her what? We don’t know anything about this light.”
“You can just explain the mechanism by which the sun shines out of your arsehole. It’s probably the same thing.”
“Warner.” Corporal Bartley’s lips were pursed tight.
Cailie looked hurt for a second, then turned back to the glowing tree. “Maybe if I get a bit closer...”
The instant she came within arm’s reach of the tree, the light died. Daylight went with it. The darkness that remained was one more suffocating than night. Thomas looked frantically around him, every direction. He couldn’t see the trees—neither the glowing tree nor the normal ones around it. Nor could he see Bartley or Cailie. There was just black.
“What’s happened?”
The sun was returned in an explosion of light and sound. Thomas whipped his head around as Cailie screamed; he caught just a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye, and saw her slumped against an unassuming boulder.
He’d made eye contact with Bartley, both bewildered, and started to back away. Cailie was still moving, slow, dazed. Her helmet was still on. When she pulled it off, Thomas saw her face was streaked with blood. She dropped the helmet to the ground and looked to him, with a silent, desperate appeal in her eyes. She’d crumpled to the floor then. Behind her the petrified old tree once again began to shine.
Thomas had run, then, and he’d been running ever since.
At last, he could rest.
Over the sound of his heavy-beating heart, he thought he heard a noise. Feet slipping on the scree? The thing had followed him all this way, and now it had caught him. Now it could feast.
Or maybe he was imagining things. He was parched and drenched with sweat. When was the last time he’d had some water? It was little wonder he was beginning to hallucinate. Briefly he tried to remember which pocket held his flask of water. He couldn’t even remember bringing one with him when they’d left camp. Brilliant. Nothing to drink. By day, if he was still alive, he could look for a stream. There had to be running water somewhere on this rock, else what were the trees living off?
Then again, if he got eaten by some unfathomable terror, dehydration wouldn’t be something he had to worry about.
That noise again. Louder. Closer. And with it, a low growl.
This was definitely not his imagination.
For an eternity he lay in silence, each breath a betrayal. He dared not peek out of the rock. What might he see if he did? More importantly, what might see him?
He pressed himself tight into the granite, tucked his face against the ground, begged for sleep to come. And when it did, he embraced it as an old friend.
