Bannerless (The Bannerless Saga 1)

“You’re cramping up,” she said. “You’re freezing—we have to get moving, keep warm!” She was in a panic now. It would be easy to sit back down with him. But if they did, they might not get up again. They were right at the edge of failing.

She chafed his legs, trying to rub some life back into them. He cried out, tried to push her away. “That hurts!”

“I know,” she said, bringing her face close to his. His hair was plastered to his head, and his face was ashen, bloodless. She couldn’t feel her own face anymore. Her hands were ghostly. “But we’ve got to move.” She kissed his chilled lips.

She wrapped her hand in the front of his tunic and pulled. He didn’t have the energy to resist and stumbled after her.

Slinging arms around each other’s waists, they slogged through the mud and didn’t stop. If they stopped, they’d be done. They just had to find a roof and a fire. That was it. Not so hard.

The whole world was drowning. Inches and inches of rainfall in a matter of hours. Their every step splashed on grasses mashed under a layer of water. Propping each other up, they slipped but didn’t fall. Once they started moving, she didn’t feel as stiff. She hoped Dak was moving easier, but didn’t have the spare attention to ask. Her focus had to stay forward, always forward.

A cut appeared in the land ahead. A shadow. She thought it might be a low cloud or fog, or another flooded section where a creek had overspilled its banks. They kept toward it because that was the direction they were already heading.

And then, the grass stopped. The cut, the gap—a road cut through the plain. Wide, flat, dirt-packed. Only now more like a boggy stretch of mud. But it was the Coast Road.

“Dak, look,” she said, thumping his chest. He sighed.

They didn’t walk on the road but kept to the grass alongside. The grass was wet, but solid, while the road had turned to soup. Still, they had direction now. They had a long way to go. North. The shape of the sun was now visible through the clouds, and it was sinking west.

Not a quarter of a mile up the road: a way station. Just a house, garage, garden plot, and windmill—not enough to be a whole household, just a place on the road between towns for people to rest, borrow a car or a bike, water their horses, have a roof for a bit.

Perfect. The most perfect thing she had ever seen.

Visibility had improved—she could actually see ahead to where she pointed.

Dak nodded tiredly and resumed the slog. That last little bit might have been the hardest part of the whole journey since the storm began. She wondered—if they just sat in the grass, wouldn’t someone eventually find them? They could wait for someone to find them.

But no, a hundred more steps would bring them to a roof, a fire, dryness, stillness. They’d come this far; they could do

that much more.

“Almost there, Dak. Come on.”

He chuckled. The sound was a little mad. Then he turned and kissed her on the cheek. A little rough, a little sloppy, and his lips were cold, but she laughed and appreciated the gesture.

Then, they arrived. A winding path lined with rough stones led from the road to the front door of the house. But Enid cut straight across from where they were to their goal, the straightest line she could make so she didn’t have to waste a step. A sign hung on the door reading WELCOME in straight, practical letters. The windows had friendly looking curtains of yellow linen inside.

At the door, they straightened, took deep breaths. Enid knocked, wondering how pathetic the two of them really looked. A man in his thirties answered. He had neat clothes, brown skin, a rather shaggy beard. They all blinked at one another for a moment.

The way station’s proprietor finally said, plainly horrified, “Oh no, were you caught out in that?”

They didn’t even have to answer. The man, who was named Abe, shuffled them inside and sat them by a warm, blazing, blissful charcoal fire burning in a wide hearth. They didn’t bother with chairs, but sank to the flagstones and started pulling off their sodden packs, blankets, coats. Abe pulled these out of the way and traded them for dry towels. The touch of dry fabric was blissful, clouds of pure warmth. The heat radiating from the fire was almost painful. Her muscles cramped; she might never be able to move again, but right now she didn’t want to.

Rain wasn’t falling. That was enough.

A half-dozen other travelers had gotten caught in the storm and had spent the last couple of days at the way station, waiting. They’d all had the good sense to stick to the Coast Road so they’d spent no more than an hour or so in rain. They’d gotten wet, but not driven themselves to hypothermia like Enid and Dak had. Everyone helped—someone brought hot tea with ginger and honey, someone else brought blankets, and everyone gathered around to hear the story, waiting while the pair of them thawed enough to be able to talk.

“There’s not much to tell, really,” Enid said, trying even to remember what had happened before and during the storm. The ruins seemed dream-like now. The journey back had been surreal.

Leave the performance to Dak. His cheeks had spots of red, his hair was a tangle, but he was finally smiling again. “A tale of high adventure,” he said. “We went exploring. Great idea until that storm came up. But you could guess that, looking at how it turned out, yeah?” Folk murmured with amazement.

“You must have hunkered down somewhere,” a woman asked.

“Naw, we were caught in the open,” and on he went, turning their last two days into some kind of noble undertaking. If Enid had been left telling the story, she would have said that it really had been a good idea, but they’d made some mistakes and learned a lot. Next time, she’d keep better watch on the skies.

Abe poured more tea for them. “Not the worst storm I’ve ever seen, but it’s up there. One of the worst, for sure. I didn’t lose any buildings, at least.”

“It’s the worst I’ve seen, I think. Any word from other places?” Enid asked. “How bad is it?”