An Education
His journey started with a letter that arrived with a man in Kynos from outside, and his father's creased brow and crinkled eyes as he read the missive the man bore in the modest stone interior of a thatch-roofed croft far east of Six Corners. The bearer of the missive was an obvious outsider, but they were not entirely unknown. They came to Kynos to pick over the bones of the Once Empire, as they knew it, though those were inert, dead stone, not the stuff of the legends that you might hear the dramatists recite at fair gatherings, remonstrances against Hubris.
His father muttered of promises and friendship, but pointed to his broken leg, and the man that Murad sent quite agreed; an unfortunate accident and the man could not travel at the speed that was required here. In his stead, he'd send his honor, his firstborn, to fulfill the obligation. The Kyneans were simple herder folk, or simple bandit folk at times. In this rocky back country, vicious feuds developed alongside a well developed sense of obligation, be it to return injury in kind or to repay debts and favor.
It was how Mardion wound up on ponyback alongside Murad's messenger, Ardur. The man that had a sneer on his lip for everything in these lands; the pony, a stout, shaggy, indefagitable sort that could plod on well past the time a more refined running breed would collapse, sustained only on grass and without the benefit of horseshoes, didn't meet the man's approval. Nor did Mardion. Young, and able to guide well through the roads and the paths to avoid the worst of things, be it trees aflame, beasts on four or two legs, he seemed to take it as effrontery that he be guided by a young man that was sure of where he was and where they were. Mardion took pains not to condescend to the man, but nothing would unprickle him.
If there hadn't been an obligation, Mardion would have probably headed back after the second day, leaving the man to find his own way back. He'd managed to make his way in, guided by another local from the borders. Mardion could have left this sour one to find his own way and probably be bushwhacked on a road. But there was an obligation, and his father put it in no uncertain terms. Go to the wizard, guide him to the destination he asked to be guided to.
Stone, brush, clay, chalk, salt and pine were the landscape, along with a brusque wind that helped spread the fires from time to time, as it was that season. The distances they were to travel, weeks of it, seemed to stretch out ahead of them interminably, as they churned through the muddy tracks that passed for roads in the Kynos, finding succor in certain communities charted out by Mardion, who learned from his father Cratus the lay of the land. It was how Mulad met the family; hiring a guide to show him through the lands during his younger years and wanderings. Some wizards were curious about the history, and then gave up when these studies revealed little of use to their Art.
The weeks were not pleasant; they bedded down where they could on the trail, using campgrounds he and his father marked for themselves and others who hired guides in the land, but the conversation was thin and Ardur's mouth twisted at the fare. The conversation was similarly sparse; curt exchanges. It was worth noting that the man's demeanor did not warm and his likeability did not improve with prolonged exposure.
As they came closer to Six Corners, from the Southeast, below the elven forests, he noted more refugees, stragglers in knots with their possessions and animals, sometimes wagons, making a desperate, unguided journey. Some were ill, others were starving, and some yet bore wounds, festering. They told tales, of a dragon, of the Mad King. It was not the recitation of a dramatist, but rather the piteous cries of the children and the begging of the women, and the ruined, defeated look of the men as the staggered into Kynos, desperate enough to risk the meager succor of a dangerous land. He tried to give them meager advice, direction on how to make it to the next safe village, but he knew the bandits and the beasts would have their feasts nonetheless. These people were prey worn down from the hunt, lurching into an unsafe land. The elves would not have them, and the Emberlands, Kynos, were not so much held as a kingdom so much as a place where only desperate outsiders or scholars came. It was not a fertile land, and the people were scattered.
He heard the tales from a burned survivor, a member of a party that they let share the campsite, he understood more of why they would risk it, even half dead as they were. The tales were of black-winged death breathing fire down on whole armies, of demons unleashed to crash in chaotic waves ferociously against organized lines, breaking them with terror and hellborne strength. In a stony redoubt, with watchers set to ensure that there would be no ambush, and a fairly warm night, everyone still looked over their shoulders and shuddered as they came to a temporary respite in their weary march away from the death, the devastation.
Others started shaking and weeping at the description, and it occured to him that he was stepping into far more than simply guiding people around. The grim, ashen faces around him, their too-big, terrified eyes were as much a testimony as the stories from the burned man, still wrapped in his bandages and smelling of ointment and slow, painful decay and death. Others, such as the aging aunt, drawn and worn down from the flight, piled on with stories of wondrous horror at the unleashing of fell magic and awful monsters.
There was little he could do for them but guide them to the next stop and pray they found it. But everyone knew that the odds were slim. And he knew that he was walking into something worse. Was this why Mulad was calling for a guide? To get him out in style? It seemed a venal aim against what his father said of the man's integrity and acumen.
The settled lands, lush places with loamy soil where things grew in abundance, but even that seemed strained as fields were either unharvested or cut down early. The locals were on edge, of a tendency to challenge first and even shoot arrows at two more tramps on the road, possibly up to no good. But it was Ardur that stopped Mardio from nocking his longbow and firing back at one that nearly took his pony out with the arrow. Kyneans were not noted soldiers, but they could hunt and eke out a living on venison, wild sheep and other game, and a bow was always of use for that. He'd never found himself drawing back an arrow in anger before, right to his cheek, and would have released but for the hand on his arm and a shake of the head. For a bastard, apparently, the man had sense. There was no sense starting a war with the locals over one farmer with a cocked eye or a mouthfull of blood looking for an excuse to kill. There were other travellers on the road, but they were generally going the other way, struggling through in small, wary knots, fresher than the ones that they met in the Kynos.
Mardion tried to steer them away, but not all of them were having it.
The other danger was the patrols of soldiers, chasing deserters and none too picky about whether or not someone actually was a deserter. They were just grabbing men, but Ardur, now the guide instead of Mardion, had some sort of paper to show them that caused the ventennar of one patrol to spit, sheath his sword completely and order his lads onward with bulging sacks of grain and a couple of live chickens squawking away under arms. It was a first taste of the predatory nature of war, men with swords taking what they would in the confusion to ensure that they were well fed and survived. The experience left a bad taste in his mouth.
His first experience of a small, prosperous city was instructive; Ardur said the place was swelled with refugees. The foot traffic began to increase, as they dismounted to lead their animals, moving with the crowds rather than being able to ride free. Ardur was able to navigate through this mess, indicating when they were to shift their position to turn here, to cross there, so that they weren't pushed out by elbows and shoulders of annoyed bazaar goers who obeyed their own unspoken laws of movement in a city. There were open market stalls and shops to gawk at, except when he tried to slow down and take a look, he had Ardur practically grabbing his upper arm to steer him away. That would have earned him a knife to the ribs except that by the time they got to this point, after weeks of forced companionship, he gave the man allowances.
They stayed in an inn that was too crowded, and were lucky to find floorspace in a stable to sleep in. Ardur grumbled about the money spent, but the innkeep was a hard faced one, and unsympathetic. Mardion was growing to know that expression as much as the too-large expression of fear. It was the face of a scavenger, as much as any vulture on the side of the road. Pitiless and unsentimental about their own windfall.
They had expected another town like the one they passed through, but more vibrant, as their destination. Instead, they were greeted with the sight of bodies in the streets, twisted in ways that spoke of the agony of their demise, bloodstains that drew a ragged line through the cobblestones, and the scorchmarks that spoke of a much more horrible sort of demise. Few of these folk had been armed, or perhaps they'd been picked clean of their weapons. It was hard to say, but there was something here that tugged at his senses, though he could not make it out...in any case, Ardur tugged at his coat to keep him from staring at the twisted, burnt corpses of mother and child. He could taste the bile at the back of his throat, he realized, and turned away quickly and heaved out his stomach's contents.
They had a meeting to attend, whether or not the inn was burnt down and filled only with charred bodies and a mournful wind...
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