of us,” he said with a frown meant to be a smile. “Murdered all my kin, all but me. How’d that good, polite boy end up like them?”
He felt tears swelling in his large eyes, and fought to hold them back. How long had it been since he had cried? His smiled faded, and became a thin, dry line. Yes, he remembered everything, and doing so wasn’t always so wise, was it? No it was not. Not at all.
It was strange how he had forgotten such a prominent turning point in his life, and now suddenly remembered it so completely. It made his small cabin hideaway make a little more sense now that he thought of it. He assumed he had been waiting for the wolves, not the boy, but maybe he had been waiting for both of them. Or maybe the wolves had come for the boy, and not the Hermit. Maybe the old man was just a spectator. Regardless, he had followed the signs this far, and would continue following them. Salvation was no small matter after all.
He looked down at the katana in his hand.
“How did he get a hold of you?
Oh yes,
I left it in her corpse.”
She was a strange woman anyway, he though. Wonder why the black armoured ants wanted her so badly.
Didn’t matter. He was the boss now. He didn’t die, although it was a close one. Too close. At least he thought it was–that was the only thing slightly foggy, the only thing not clear and bright in his mind. Stabbed with his own sword by the boy. He remembered it well enough, sure he did, just remembered it from behind a curtain of mist. But he had lost a lot of blood, and that would fog up anybody’s mind, wouldn’t it?
“Yes,” he said, “yes it would indeed.”
But still it was foggy, and not to be trusted.
Or no.
It wasn’t foggy. It was a blurry memory–and he realized suddenly why it was blurry: he had more than one memory of the same incident. He wasn’t remembering a single memory, nor two of them. He was seeing a cluster of them. A pack of the cursed things, muddling into each other like a composition of dark colours of paint climbing in together and becoming distorted. This took his attention away from everything, and he fell into himself a little.
“How strange,” he said, falling a little further in, and slowing his stroll to the cabin.
Numerous memories, and only one ended differently. Only one stuck out slightly from the others, one which prevailed from the others like a child with clear eyes standing amongst blind siblings–and the old man believed that single memory was the very thing which allowed him to be here today, the thing which let him live. He did not question the why and how of having more than one of the same memory–in a way he already knew why. Sure he did. Just couldn’t say it. Wouldn’t even try if he wanted to.
No, some things are better pushed back, better left alone.
He began to whistle a little song.
After finding the cabin on the beach, he stamped up the stairs, not caring who or what could hear him–nobody had lived in these parts for some time–and pulled open the rickety door, letting it slam against the rotted siding. The rusted hinges squealed, and pulled out slightly from the dark doorframe. The old man glanced at the splintered wood, but gave it no mind. There were more important matters at hand than the likes of a broken door.
And then it came to him, a broken door. That was how he managed to live, how he had escaped the fate the boy had bestowed upon him. The old man, in his younger years had locked the boy in that jail cell with that dead lady, but for some reason the door had been broken. This made him smile, although he didn’t fully understand why.
How had the door been broken?
His smile broadened when he thought on how the boy now looked so afraid, tied to that tree. How he thought he was a ghost. Funny kid.
“What’s that?” he asked, suddenly.
Something moving, outside of his little cabin.
He crept out onto the porch, katana gripped in one hand, rusty dagger in the other. It was too dark to see anything, and he wasn’t about to go stomping off towards the sea looking for whatever it is he heard. Tide was tricky in these parts. Never know how far out it was. So he went back inside, tied three torches together, and ignited all of them. They engulfed the small room in a light so bright the old man had to squint. The flames were snarling and bloated. The heat soothing. Closest thing to daylight a man could get. There was no furniture in the room which was now drenched in that warm light, just a pile of hay for sleeping, and a bucket for doing his business when the tide was too high to leave. His little hideaway was on stilts, so he could live here all year. Live here undisturbed in his game of waiting.
He stomped outside, dagger now in his pouch, but the katana still held out in front of him. The light from the torch flung out into the outside air like a monster on a leash about to snap, trembled against its dark surroundings as if about to burst into tears. The black water was close, but not too close–so it that hadn’t been the cause of all this commotion.
“Who’s out there?” he whispered.
The sound of small waves lapped against the distant shore in slow, muted whooshes. A pleasant sound. If there had been crickets that night, they would have been fully audible, easy to hear and define. Normal, simple sounds. There was nothing else out there.
Then why had I heard something?
“You’re an old fool,” he scoffed.
Still, he lurked further towards the sea. The curiosity ran too deeply. Tugged too passionately.
Movement again.
“What’s that?” he whispered, hesitation in his voice.
Something’s out there.
Someone.
No.
Not human.
9
How did you come to be a soldier? The question still gnawed at Vincent, still clawed like icy fingernails, leaving red marks over the black spots in his mind. Why would he ask me that?
I was only a boy.
Only a–
A memory came to him like a large flag whimpering down from high above, hard to make out at first but there and falling closer. It wasn’t exactly the memory he had been searching for, had nothing to do with when he became a soldier, but fell upon him just the same. It was more the turning point which led him into the deep waters of failure, the thing which changed him forever.
He really was in a city when it happened–an abandoned one. Mostly abandoned. The rain was cruel that day, devastating and remorseless. Unceasing. It gushed down the muddy streets in a ragged stream, pulling half-rotted corpses with it. The crumbling stone walls watched in a sort of guilt, a silence which would haunt Vincent for the rest of his life. Even though he had forgotten, the feeling was still there, still working at him like a miner trying to dig himself out of a collapsed cave. It was a form of helplessness, a realm of hopelessness. The fact that it was too late was something that gave the city a black, hollow feeling. Too late for those who had once lived in the city. Too late for everything.
That day was filled with the sound of heavy rain and spewing water–those who had been crying and screaming had given up months ago. Had given up, or died like the rest.
Yes, Vincent was only a boy at that time. Only a child, confused by the plague which had torn through the city in a remorseless onslaught, the sickness which affected the mind, and drove its victims to madness. When the black armoured Vellonian soldiers had first appeared, he hadn't known who they were. Confused as to why they had the same coloured skin as him. The same pale skin. Living in Fellekose had an otherworldly nature to it, and those soldiers were the first pale men the boy had ever seen. He was scared in a way. Unsure of them. He hid in the narrow alleyways and watched as they passed through. It wasn’t until they heard the screaming–too horrible to be anything human–that they made any sort of reaction to the dismal surroundings.
“Coming from the west,” a soldier with a deep voice said, his heavy helmet covering most of his face, his black armour scared and stained. They had no horses that day. Only grunts on patrol. Although, it seemed that they should have had horses. Vincent remember
ed the thumping of hooves. But no, those soldiers hadn’t a single horse.
“What do you think?” asked another, one with armour not quite as elaborate. “Could be a trap.”
The screams came again.
Vincent knew something of what those screams were, different than the ones which had littered the surroundings earlier, different than the cries of dying vagrants in a home they once belonged to. The strange men were within the walls again, and Vincent understood this new sound had something to do with them, had something to do with the men with skin as black as oil. This, after all, was their place now. Their home. They had come in after the sickness had finished most of those within the city, but never showed themselves much. Always hid, always strange noises echoing through the abandoned streets and alleyways–and now this new form of screaming. It was like the sound of a thousand mothers crying over their deceased children, accompanied by another thousand cannibals frothing and screaming for fresh meat after a year of eating twigs and grass. A sound that once heard, would always lurk within the blackest parts of your soul, would always remain, always prevail.
Vincent climbed a little further down the muddy alleyway, trying to get closer to the soldiers. It was hard to hear them under the downpour of rain, so he squatted behind a broken crate right at the edge of the street, the rain only slightly catching him.
The soldier with the deep voice and large helmet pointed to half the men and made a strange