Tide were coming in.
He saw across the smudged treetops and though grey scudding clouds that the tide had turned. Time to quit daydreaming and ball up the afternoons forage.
Mal turned away from the horizon, towards the forests he known all his life. Fifteen seasons – as far as he knew – he had lived with these lands. And this autumn felt much like the last. The air heavy with rain and the promise of merciless cold to come.
Hoisting his pack over his shoulder, he clumped down the valley towards home.
Despite the damp, the forest continued to be rich with life. The stag had come to terms and ended their rut. Rabbit and squirrel gathered as much as they could for their cold stores and buried caches. Boar shunted through the litter for the last morsal.
Mal felt the last of the sun dip below the tree-line and had the premonition this was the last warmth he’d feel for a while.
Winding downwards, pack in hand, his mind wandered back through memories of this summers market. Lingering on the strong backed boys from the farm land and and slim ankled girls from town. Their lives unknowable from his own.
The valley flattened out, his feet following the same paths he had walked since he was able to put one foot in front of another. As he neared the cottage which hugged the v of the valley, stream tricking through the bottom most gulley, he felt the comfort of home.
The cottage felt like it held back the hills, a wedge that had existed here eons before the waters had carved these lands into fiefdoms for short sighted men.
He knew it wasn’t true. He had carried the stone here himself when he could barely walk with his Ma. But it felt as such.
Inside, Mal stoked the fireplace, smoke rolling from the musty slabs of peat. The cottage held heat poorly, embraced the rain and barely bulwarked a mild spring frost. But by nursing a meagre fire to smoulder throughout the day he found the cottage more than liveable. The only place he had ever known as home.
Night fell heavy here. The whole forest silent. Stars bristled through the clouds as the cold rolled in – a god’s blanket being unfurled down the valley – a thick mist shone white in the moonlight.
Mal wasn’t one for superstition, but he was familiar in the proper ways. His ma had taught him the voice of the land, the needs of the hills and the petty squabbles of the spirits. He kissed his mothers necklace above the fireplace and unpacked the forage.
A swift boot in the shins woke Arnel from a dreamless sleep.
If you could call three hours fitful rest in a damp, leaf lined ditch “sleep”. He drew himself to his knees, the leaves falling from his tunic as the sun touched the treetops. Soon it would be dark. He pulled the jute pack – which recently served as his ditch pillow – towards him and struggled to his feet. Not the man he once was, but still life in the old dog yet.
Around him other figures were rising from the leaf litter, congealing into a variety of human forms. Some silhouettes buckled or missing limbs; some more sturdy, others looked not to far from shadows themselves.
Arnel looked about him and gave a weary sigh. Five years out of the Corp and look at him now. One more summer and he will have enough to call an end to all this.
Somewhere down the hill Maxton signalled the owl call reveille.
The figures heaved toward the sound. Coughing, murmuring and spitting as they went. They mustered loosely, waiting for Maxton to appear out of the gloom to serve up the evenings orders as he always did, as he’d done for the past fourteen moons.
Maxton had a way of keeping everyone in line. Eight shadows coalesced at the foot of a rotting stump. Maxton wouldn’t make them wait long. Nights are cold in these parts and it’ll need quite the fire to keep this party warm.
“Three gosberries ‘n six hands of alnleaf will no please the crone”, Mal muttered to himself. Carefully scooping each precious pile into a separate pouch, he took note of the weights and measures in his ledger.
In three moons time the autumn market would gather in town and with the last weeks forage he wasn’t entirely sure it would be a success. He could try further sunwards tomorrow for more alnleaf or down by Brookits Meer. Worst case the could cut it with a little ornroot and his own juniper – but that’d be worst case.
He skewered another peat slab and whipped it into the fireplace.
Placing both palms on the table he arched his back and neck. Smoke rolled across the roof space like the seas Mal had seen once as a child. Pooling and warping with the air currents.
“One unhappy crone indeed.”
Maxton’s spittle hung in the air, frozen snapshot in the moonlight as he spat forth his last plosive. “Breath and spit wasted on these mongrels” he thought as he looked out over their dark shapes.
Few of the eyes rose. Most focussed on the floor, rocking gently from side to side. “Throne preserve us” thought Maxton as he slumped into his makeshift palanquin. Half spent from the sermon, half spent with the task.
Arnel took a knee at the front of the sledge, waiting for the leadman’s grunt before lifting his corner of Maxton’s palanquin to his shoulders. The rhetoric of the true heir’s voice, the “once and future king” still ringing in his thoughts as he lurched into the dark.
Arnel shouldered his burden without complaint. Trudging through the forest, feeling the gradient fall forever downwards toward what he hoped would be a valley floor. The rasping breath of his companions and their mismatched footfall the only sounds.
The valley flattened. Arnel ground his shoulder into a shrug to alleviate the weight of the chair. The outline of a cottage loomed into view through the darkness. Maxton raised a hand.
The party instantly stopped, wise to the murklight held in Maxton’s signet ring. Breath silenced, they stooped to gently place the palanquin onto the forest floor.
Arnel took up his position at Maxton’s side and helped hoist the god-king onto his back. Maxton’s withered knees tucked under Arnel’s armpits as Arnel – in turn – pulled Maxton’s tabard across his face.
Eye slits cut in the tabard provided at least partial visibility, but he relied on Maxton’s hips to do the directing.
Maxton threw his arms wide, fingers clenching and twisting – silently directing the others with murklight semaphore into encircling the small dwelling.
As they fanned around the building, Maxton felt nothing stir within. Flexing his thighs he bade Arnel forward. No need to be over cautious.
Arnels feet were sure, and they approached the cottage door in complete silence. Maxton could hear a fire within, a low bubble underneath the crackle indicating something on top of that fire. Otherwise he heard nothing.
Maxton gave a brief chirrup in final command. Then a firm grip of his knees was enough to indicate that Arnel should breach the building.
Mal turned in his chair with the crash. His eyes struggling to refocus from the firelight to the doorway.
An Ogryn had burst through the doorframe and into his room. Mal’s pipe dropped from his lips. His mind lurched between survival, the pouches lined up neatly on the table and to the bolter strapped to his chair leg.
Choosing the latter he whipped the bolter up from its holster as he kicked back on his chair, pivoting on one wooden leg.
The bolter roared in the enclosed space, tearing the Orgyns face in two. The beast bucked unnaturally as it fell. Mal’s chair collapsed beneath him and he rolled onto his side.
The Ogryn’s legs continued to scrabble under it despite its ruined face. Mal grimaced at the beasts determination to survive before levelling the bolter and booming stillness into its chest.
Straining his ears through the splintered doorframe, all Mal could hear was the fireplace pop and fizz along with burble of the pot upon the stove.
His heart hammered in his chest.
A nearby owl called.