“You’re a fool not to believe me. Haven’t you seen those demons shadowing us? They look like great black dogs, a pair of them, but they have red eyes and fangs, and they feast on dead flesh! I saw the guards shoot arrows at them one evening. Haven’t you heard them barking at night?”
“Many a starving dog roams the woods. Those who don’t know the woodlands may see any kind of creature in its shadows, but that doesn’t mean they’re really there.”
“Believe what you will. I’ve lived five winters in the forests. I’ve seen dark shades prowling. I’ve seen elfshot shivering in the wind. I’ve fought off wolves. I’ve kissed forest nymphs, but their breath stank of rotting waterweed. If you’d seen what I’d seen, you’d not doubt.”
“The wolves I believe,” said Will. “My aunt’s cousin’s son got et by wolves. Torn to pieces, and him walking home from mass, he was, at Dearc.”
“Wintertide,” agreed Walker. “That’s when wolves’re hungriest. They’ll eat anything. They like fat babies best, though.”
“Hush, you chattering crows!” snarled the man roped in back of Walker. He had a hard, nasty voice, one that stung when its sound hit you, and a particularly bad smell to him, all rotting sweet.
“Hush,” murmured Will, for the others were scared of that voice; their own voices betrayed them when they whispered among themselves at night or responded to the man’s retorts or gibes.
To understand the world around him, he had to listen. He had heard their whispered confessions; they often spoke around him as if he weren’t there. Will had stolen bread from a biscop’s table for his crippled parents; Walker had been caught with a band of starving brigands stealing a lady’s milk cow; the rest were no better, and no worse—many were hungry and the last two harvests had failed. But the one they called Robert never confessed his crime to the other prisoners, and it seemed likely to them that he was a foul murderer.
Nearby, axes cut into wood, a man shouted a warning, and a tree splintered, groaned, and fell with a resounding crash that shuddered along the ground, vibrating up through the soles of his feet. The breeze turned, taking the worst of the scorched smell with it. No birds sang.
Fear crept along his shoulders. In some other place the birds had fled, too. All gone. A horrible pain filled his belly as he wept, remembering only that his hands had been slick with blood. Where had he been? What was he doing?
Who am I?
Flashes of memory sparked.
Ships slide noiselessly onto the strand, a shining sand beach touched by the light of the morning sun rising over low hills. Because they come from the west, the ships lie somewhat in shadow—or perhaps that is only a miasma of death and destruction that hovers over them. What pours forth from them cannot be called human, yet neither are these creatures beasts. They are fashioned much like humankind, with their strange, sharp faces and the shape of their limbs and torsos, but under the sun’s light their skin gleams as if scaled with metal—bronze, or copper, or iron—and the body of each one bears a pattern of white scars or of garish yellow, white, or red paint formed into bright sigils. Fearsome dogs yammer beside them, leaping into the fray, biting and tearing. The defenders of this quiet estate fight fiercely and with great courage, led by a handsome young lord carrying shield and sword, but the invaders outnumber them.
It is only a matter of time.
The lord’s hall catches on fire, flame racing’ along the thatched roof.
“Hey, there! Hey! You can stop now, Silent. We’re here.”
“It’s strange, isn’t it, how sometimes he seems to be hearing us, and other times it’s as if he’s gone right out of his head. Maybe he’s one of them whose soul got eaten by wights, just sucked clean out of him.”
“I pity him, poor man.”
“Well, friend, I pity us, for look and see what manner of a pit we’ve come to. A great gaping hole in the earth. Look at those pools of filthy water! Gah, it stinks! I don’t mean to spend the rest of my life here, I tell you that.”
“Hush, Walker. We’ll speak of that later when none can overhear. Here, now, Silent, sit you down. The master is talking with the foreman. God help us, this is a sour and ugly place.”
A hand pressured him downward, and he sat, numb, bewildered. Only when he dreamed could he see, and then he suffered visions of such a fearful host that it was almost a relief when darkness ate those dreams, as it always did.
Wind played across his face. Around him, the other prisoners murmured nervously. The dust of stones clotted the air, and everywhere around rang the sound of picks and shovels and the scrape of wheels along rock.
“There goes the master,” said Walker. “Bound for home, a soft bed, good ale, and the next lot of sorry men like us. He must be glad to be free of this hellhole.”
“I hate you,” said Robert.
All the prisoners shifted as the words chafed them. He could feel the placement of their bodies, three to his left and five clustered to his right, with as much space as any of them could manage between them and Robert.
“I don’t think he’s talking to you,” whispered Will.
“The wights sucked out his soul, too,” murmured Walker.
“I hate you. No. No, you’ll look! Look at the blood! Is that her bonny face?”
The anger and despair in that voice poisoned the air as surely as did the dust and the drifting ash and the stink of distant forges.
He reached, groping, and found a hairy arm, well muscled, that belonged to Robert, but a hand slapped his away, and that voice cursed him while weeping, tears and fury together. He withdrew his hand, now wet with the other man’s tears.