Bleak
#2 of North
So it takes a while before anything furry actually shows up. But from here on, while its still Dian's story, most of the characters will not be human. I have an idea of how this world (literally the planet) works, but have no idea if its even physically possible. But fuckit. Its more fantasy than sci-fi. I started writing in first-ish person because I thought that'd be fun. I'll probably stick with that. If you see anything incongruous or probably a mistake feel free to point it out - I need to get past my laziness and actually edit this stuff adequately. An embarrassing mistake might be what is required.
Please comment and/or vote - constructive criticism is welcome. I hate waiting years/months to be able look back on my writing with real detachment and objectivity. Gotta work on that...
I began to feel a buzzing, tingling sensation. I felt little else- I remember attempting to panic but it soon left me. I was too numb to fell much at all. I eventually explored myself; the tingling outlined what I recognized as my body. My only knowledge of my physical self was the sensation. I do not remember sight, or darkness; I do not remember anything I can describe as visual from those vague memories. When I think back to that time, I have trouble attaching any temporal value to it - I remember it, but I constantly feel as if I am forgetting it. It was an odd time, and it ended abruptly.
The neutral tingling began to grow warmer. I felt as if I was sprinkled with droplets of warm water. The heat and the intensity of the sensation increased. Soon I was uncomfortably warm and the prickling sensation became bothersome. It continued to intensify, and I began to feel the sickly edge of panic take me again. I felt the panic, this time, and it stayed. It burned.
"Wake up, little man! Wake!" Oh gods it hurt. That gruff voice tore at my ears, an unbearable pressure welling up inside my head. Splitting me wide open; starting at the temples. The burning continued and I felt a different kind of pain as I involuntarily thrashed. I opened my eyes and immediately regretted it. The world spun around me, only partially because of my disorientation.
The burning continued, but the discomfort subsided somewhat. I began to notice other sensations; the pressure on my shoulder and the abrasive wool enveloping me. I felt I was unclothed beneath the material that swathed me, but I couldn't muster the energy to make anything of that knowledge. Oh, but it hurt. I am truly glad I awoke to these feelings, but I am not fond of the memory.
After a moment I decided the world around would not stop rocking any more than it had, and risked an attempt at opening my eyes. Everything was grey. The distressingly irritated face looking down at me was mostly brown-ish, though. I remember that very distinctly, very dark fellow; lots of hair, beardy, decades of exposure to the sun, and sunken eyes. It spoke.
"Boy, can ye' here me?" I managed a single nod and his scowl shifted to something like relief. "Good. Was beginning to wonder if I'd have te' throw you back over." If he continued, I can't say. I believe I slipped into unconsciousness again.
I later found that I had been mostly unconscious for about five days after the man had pulled me from the sea. He was a sailor from the Miss Adventure, and he had managed to cut-off with the small away-boat before the ship brought it down with it. He had pulled me from the frigid water, on a whim, he had told me. Normally he wouldn't have bothered, as I hadn't been moving and the cold can kill very quickly. I consider myself very lucky for having been saved, and then surviving. The man had warmed me, I assume with his own body heat as well as the blanket. Whatever had happened on that little boat, my memories begin again with the grinding of wood on stone and the gruff cursing of my companion. I felt incredibly weak, but managed to pull myself up enough to see the man's head bobbing beyond the rim of the small boat. He was pulling the boat up onto a shale beach.A few more uncomfortable tugs on our boat, and the man grunted and looked up at me.
"It 'ent getting up much further like this. If you can get up, your clothes should be dry. If you can put those on, then you'd better be able to help me pull this splinter out of the water or you'll get washed back out come the tide."
I eventually managed to get dressed, though the man had to clamber back into the boat to help me. I must've eaten during my convalescence, though I felt an almost painful emptiness and weakness emanating from my gut. Otherwise I do not think I would have been able to help the man pull our little boat the lengths necessary to be safely past the tideline. Where the slick grey shale ended, a field of white began. In the distance I saw a dark horizon of a forest, but for several miles inland gentle dunes of purest white defined the terrain. It reminded me of the sandy dunes on the beaches around Port Lemuse, though if there was sand here it lay beneath a thick sheet of snow.
I turned back to the boat, which was now flipped bottom-up, and the man was nowhere to be seen. Before I could call out a hand beckoned from under the lip of the boat and beckoned. I knelt and the man grunted as he held up the side of the little boat for me, getting the picture I scrambled underneath, knocking my head in the process. It was nearly absolute darkness. The dim light that came from the gap between the boat and the ground didn't travel in the tight space. As I settled down I felt the blessed absence of the wind - it was still damn cold, and damp, but the cutting winds of the coast were mostly blocked by the upturned boat. Cold tendrils of air whistled through the gaps around my seat, and I shivered. Strangely, only in the relative warmth of the shelter I noticed my clothing was still damp. The night that followed never got darker. A perpetual twilight persisted outside of our cramped shelter.
That first night we spent beneath an overturned boat on the shale and snow shoreline, lost in the far north, was spent shivering in and out of wakefulness. The pressure in my head, and my weakness confirmed that I was extremely ill. I knew that to wait any longer without fire and proper shelter of some sort would be to invite death.
That I had survived a dunking, unconscious, in the North Sea tested my luck enough.
My companion was not talkative. As I try to remember him I am surprised at how little I know of my savior, Gill. I only knew him as Gill. Never thought to ask his clan name or of his origins. I spent three weeks in his company and I do not recall once successfully engaging the fellow in a proper conversation. Of course, much of the time I was sleeping, barely conscious and utterly miserable as I suffered through my recovery. I believe my youth saved me from simply not recovering; a slow death in that barren wilderness. Perhaps a middle aged version of my body would not have survived. I recovered from crippling illness in perhaps the worst possible environment for a man's health. I remember being perpetually damp, partially frozen and always aching from lying on the frozen soil.
The night we spent in the boat was miserable enough to convince myself and y companion to abandon it, and make our stumbling way across the snow fields to the tree line. There, the forest was not dense enough to shelter us completely from the elements but beneath each of the great pines was an island of dead, but mercifully dry earth.
The coastal forest was sparse, the trees old and broad and scarred by time. Unlike the old growth forests in the interior from Port Lemuse, these trees were not marked by the telltale darkened trunks of forest fires. I suppose the undergrowth simply would not grow to be a problem in a land of nearly perpetual winter. This lack of loose kindling nearly proved to be our undoing. My companion futilely searched for fire wood as I lay immobile, propped up against the vast dark trunk of an ancient fir. Eventually he found that the thick mosses growing on the tree-trunks could be used as a fuel of sorts - a peat-like substance. The moss was dry to the point of brittleness, but burnt slowly and with only a hint of heat. We kept the fire going perpetually, outside of the lean-to he constructed against the base of the great fir from branches sawn and hacked off with his long-knife.
Food we had, though it lasted only three days. Dried fish from a sack tied to the underside of the little boat's bench. I cannot claim to know how he managed it, I was not usually awake to witness his work, but the man managed to capture us several rabbits and squirrels. He likely set traps. The meat, the fire, and the water he melted with our small fire kept us alive. It was two full weeks before I was recovered enough to travel and the man insisted we do. He was right, of course, that we would die if we did not find civilization soon. Food we had, shelter we had, and eventually I had my health back but it seems like very little to have when unendingly cold and half-starved.
"Boy, we are going to follow the coast north, do you understand?" He looked back and down at me from his higher position, he was standing on a boulder which I was still struggling to scramble over. "That way we should reach the garrison town, Scald. It'll be close. Not more than two days, three at the outside." He sounded as if he were trying to convince himself of that, rather than tell me. He always spoke in an odd, disconnected way. It made the man sound as if he were talking to himself more often than not.
"But isn't Scald north of Sarmapils?" I replied lamely. I had wanted to go to Sarmapils. It had been the destination of the Miss Adventure. Scald was nearly two hundred miles further north. A garrison settlement, it would have little to offer in terms of commerce. I had perhaps forgotten the loss of my silver. It struck me then, in tandem with the realization that I was truly stranded, well out of civilization and the world I had been raised in, with only the still salt-encrusted clothes on my back.
"Aye it is. We're well north now, boy. If ye' haven't noticed." Gill gestured expansively at the snow canopied forest. As I struggled to pull myself over the boulder Gill made no move to assist me. "The stars say, boy, that we're some hundreds o' miles north of the Snow-Fort." Sarmapils was often referred to as the Snow-Fort. It was, indeed, mostly a fortification with a town attached to it. It was also usually bound by many months' worth of snow.
"You can tell?" I paused for breath as I hauled myself over the peak of the boulder. "So well... Just by the stars?" I was incredulous. I knew, of course, that navigation by the stars was an important and fine discipline, especially for those that plied their trade on the open seas.
"Aye, boy, but only 'so well'. We might well be north of Scald too. I'd not know. Without the right instruments, I can't tell for sure." The man shrugged wearily, and pulled his bragged brown watch-cloud tight around him.
"We can't go north then! If we've missed Scald, then we're marching to our deaths!" There were no settlements, so far as I knew, north of the Scald Garrison. Scald is the most northerly reach of civilization - a garrison manned by the same martial order that controlled Sarmapils, and most of its satellite settlements.
"We can't go south either, boy. Nuroslavl is too far, even if we are still south of Scald. We can only hope that the stars tell true, and the storm was merciful. If it sent us north of Scald we're dead already. No use worrying over it." The man always spoke gruffly, but even so I could hear fear in his voice. He worried, and if he was worried I had to be terrified. To die of exposure; slowly, searching for shelter that we would never find. We could camp in the woods and eventually sickness, starvation or a storm would kill us. Scald was our only chance for survival.
"How could we have been blown so far north?" I questioned, panting heavily. Gill spat.
"The North sea has two kinds o' storms, boy. Dependin' on the season, they might push ye' north or south. We just happened to be in the wrong place... normally ye' can see the storms growing off in the distance. This'n opened up right on top o' us. Big enough that we couldn't get away afore it took our sails." Gill spat, again, before hopping down the opposite side of the boulder to continue slogging through the snow. I hauled myself upright, slid clumsily off the boulder and tried to follow the path he flattened. Between the great firs the snow was easily three hands deep, and I hadn't the strength to push through that unassisted for long.
On the fourth day of travel, eighteen days since we'd come ashore, the wind shifted to blow off the sea. The salty air it brought was, if possible, even wetter and more penetrating. The dried meat Gill had collected from his surprisingly successful trapping during the weeks we spent camped beneath the fir was dwindling. I suspected we had less than two days before we would begin before we would start to starve. The terrain remained the same, to the west the snow fields and the shale beaches, to the east the endless northern forests. It was dark. Hell, it was always dark. I did not panic, though I will not claim this was strength on my part. I was simply too desperate to believe that we still had a chance, my lack of panic was perhaps a more extreme form of dread. Gill marched ever onwards. It wasn't that he never tired, but rather he was always uniformly tired. I often spoke to him, he rarely answered verbally. The freezing wind made speech painful, which kept conversations short.
Four days, when Gill had said three... at most. Our supplies were rapidly depleting. The weather had gotten worse. I am amazed I did not simply give up and die that day. I had considered it, more seriously than I care to admit. My numb perseverance paid off.
Though the light barely changed, it was getting late. 'Night' was coming. Though we could have traveled just as impaired as we did during the 'day' I suppose night remained to us a time for rest. Usually. Gill did not stop, and I always followed his lead. Normally he'd stop and we'd huddle beneath a fir. I wanted to speak out and ask him- ask him to stop, to let me rest. Truthfully I could barely make it through the short day of traveling that was our routine for those few days, I was still weak. The cold and the numbness quelled my desire to call out to him. We marched up a hill. Most of it was bare of snow, a massive fir perched on its crown like an umbrella. I resolved to stop once we reached the base of the fir at the top of the hill, and if Gill kept going I would not follow. As it was, the steep hill nearly had me collapse before I could even reach its top. Gill had no trouble traversing the brutal terrain; he reminded me of a stocky, dark and bearded mountain goat.
As I neared the hill's zenith I looked up, thinking Gill would have already proceeded down the other side and out of sight. Instead, the dark man stood, hand shading his eyes, as if he were searching the far distance. As I neared him I began to call to him, to ask him what he saw, but he spoke first.
"Smoke, boy." It didn't register for a moment.
"Where!? We've made it? How far?" He said smoke, and I had thought Scald, as if it were the only thing imaginable to me. It was, in many ways, I was too tired to think beyond the next step. The next step had been a perversely dogged desperation for Scald. Whatever hell hole it might've been, even that isolated monastic outpost would have been heaven to me. I finally found the smoke Gill was talking about: a think, pale plume of wood smoke barely discernible against the lead skies and grey-green canopy of the forest.
"No, boy. This 'ent the garrison. If you could see Scald's smoke, you'd be able to see Scald." I noticed Gill had his hand resting where he kept his long-knife on his belt underneath his brown watch coat. It should've worried me, but it didn't. Too numb. I was about to ask him what it was but the man spoke again.
"It's likely one of the natives. This time o' year no trappers, no whalers, nobody make comes ashore this far north. One o' the natives boy." Anybody with a fire sounded good to me. To a truly desperate mind everything but death is salvation.
"Will they... will they help us? Gill?" I know how frail I was, mentally more than physically then. Considering that, and how obvious it must've been, Gill took pity on me.
"They'll help us, boy. Don't worry, they'll help." All I knew of the natives of the far sparsely populated north were that they were few in number, lived harsh lives, and were universally regarded as little more than barbarians. The image that comes to mind is, oddly, a stocky, dark and hairy man just like Gill, albeit shrouded in uncured pelts and armed to the teeth with primitive but intimidating weaponry. Perhaps they aren't like that at all, I still don't know.
Gill stood absolutely still for a long moment, features scrunched into a disturbing mockery of pensiveness. He wasn't a pretty man. Eventually he came to a resolution on whatever it was that had worried him; he drew his long-knife slowly, deliberately.
When a man like Gill unsheathes a blade the world seems to get quieter, as if to pay closer attention. Men like Gill draw blades to accomplish things, and when nothing conventionally handled with a blade is apparent, there is little room left for the imagination. Gill was a scary fellow, in some ways. He pointedly began to march down the hill towards the plume of smoke, knife in hand. He held the long-knife close to his body, unrestricted by still partially obscured by the folds of his watch-cloak. I followed him, stumbling and barely keeping myself upright half-sliding downhill.
As we reached the relative evenness of the forest around the hill Gill stooped and his gait became more purposeful, almost as if he was stalking some prey. I continued bumbling along, probably creating a hideous racket in the frozen silence of the forest. Evidently I was far enough away that Gill didn't think my noisiness was an issue, as I followed a good thirty paces behind his sure-gaited step.
A slow, but exhausting mile later Gill stopped, taking a knee but keeping his eyes locked forward. When I caught up to him he abruptly grabbed the ragged end of my sleeve and jerked downwards. He probably meant to force me to my knee as well, but it in my weakened state I collapsed onto my side. Whatever he meant to do he made no comment, placing his hand on my cloaked shoulder and firmly holding me down for a moment. The message was clear; 'don't move' and 'wait'. I did. Exhaustion made it all the easier. Gill, still stooped low, began to inch forward. I strained my neck to look up from my grounded vantage point and saw he was moving into a snowy-clearing in the trees. My breath frosted thickly on the frozen dirt now so close to my face.
In the middle of the clearing was a large, blackened skeleton of a fir. Its limbs were scorched as thoroughly as its trunk, and just as naked. A striking image I remember well. It took another moment before I noticed the crude wooden shelter built partially into a hollow in the vast trunk of the dead tree. Smoke was rising wispily from a hole in one corner of the mossy roof. It didn't look like salvation, but it certainly felt like it at the time. I slipped into unconsciousness thinking of being warm and safe inside the 'house'.
I still hate myself for falling asleep there. Sometimes I wonder how much good it would have done if I'd been awake, it's doubtful I could have done anything. I tell myself that, you see, but I can't help it. I would've witnessed, definitively, Gill's fate. Perhaps it's the lack of closure that bothers me so. Then again, had I been awake I might not be here today.
When I awoke, once more to the dull ache that seemed to permanently shroud the body in this harsh, frigid land it was a while before I came to my senses. After perhaps ten minutes, or an hour, I cannot say with any certainty - I realized my error. I had fallen asleep while Gill had gone to investigate the little cabin in the clearing. I sat up and casting about I found no sign of my companion, and instinctually I became apprehensive. In the unchanging twilight of this northern tundra I could not accurately guess how long I had slept - though I suspected it had been at least several hours.
But the cabin- twisting about I peered through the gloom into the relative brightness of the clearing towards the small tree-trunk cabin which had before been the source of the smoke. I could make out no smoke coming from house. Frankly, that scared me even more. My lifeline in this world was missing without a trace - I had neglectfully fallen asleep even as he had willingly confronted the possibility of danger for our sakes. Gill had the knife, he had the food and most importantly he had the confidence for both of us - without him I doubt I would have made it half as far without surrendering myself to the hopelessness of our situation.
For a time I sat as frozen in my will as in my body - aching and stiff on the cold earth. Then I moved; I had to. I kept telling myself I would go and find Gill. I would just go to the house and get Gill and ask him why he hadn't retrieved me. Or I would help him. If he needed it. Somehow I would get Gill and we would figure out what to do. About the smoke. About Scald. About something. I didn't want to think about what might have happened to him. I did not have any definitive reason to believe anything had happened - or so I told myself. I don't think I really believed anything had happened to Gill at that time - through the monotonous torture of our death-march north I had come to see Gill as something beyond human. Gill was part of the scenery - he had become my anchor, my tether to sanity. The only other human being for... what? Hundreds of miles in any direction? If not more.
So I pulled myself up, creaking and with undue strain, though I felt no discomfort because of my numbness. I made my way slowly, as a cripple, to the edge of the clearing some few feet away and paused where the snow, and Gill's still fresh footprints began. They were perfect, perhaps even more perfect than when he had left them now that the exposed soft snow had hardened. I decided to follow his prints; it would cut down on noise and would be easier than dragging myself through the deep and hard-crusted snow around it. My pre-made path, set out before me, leading off into the ethereal white expanse in the dusk. Towards that little hovel set into the trunk of a lightning-struck tree.
I was scared of the hovel- and of whatever awaited me inside. I knew, however, that if I didn't go I'd just die of hunger, or freeze to death if I couldn't stay warm enough. It was likely to be a combination of the two.
As I entered the clearing I distinctly remember thinking it would feel brighter - I was surprised to find no discernible change in light in the open or beneath the trees. The north is a strange place. When I reached the midway point, Gill's tracks became righter as if he had attempted to move more stealthily. In the near distance a howl echoed through the low hills and among the frozen trees. I paused, howls such as that one had been common on our journey, but I had never even seen sign of a wolf. This one sounded close - not more than a mile. My already pounding heart began to hammer such that I feared its thrashing would certainly give me away. I could feel its pulses in my cheeks.
Unbidden, fears and thoughts of death came rushing into my mind. I repelled them and steeled myself. I was so close- whether to death or salvation or something entirely different mattered little. I was close to something and it wasn't going to be wolves. I continued to march by Gill's trail, faster now. The howl had reminded me- whatever lay in wait for me wasn't likely to be any worse than what I knew awaited me exposed in this wilderness.
As I came to the hovel's entrance, a short opening curtained by ragged, rotting and uncured animal hide I wished desperately that I had a knife of my own to draw. As it was I felt extremely vulnerable and somewhat foolish to be entering such a place empty-handed. I occupied my hands by dragging my cloak tighter to my body. Around the hut the snow had been disturbed by numerous prints, which continued on and around the bulk of the dead tree trunk.
In three resolute strides I was standing directly before the fur-veiled doorway. Certainly, if anybody was inside they would be aware of my presence. I surprised myself with the realization that I honestly couldn't decide which I preferred - it to be habited or uninhabited. I drew a deep breath, the cold air burning my lungs, and quickly drew aside the furs, stooping as I swept through the entrance and into...
... I decidedly empty hole of a room. It was oppressively murky within. A single, cramped room, entirely enclosed but for the entry and a small hole in the center of the roof. The musty stench of wet dog and rotting furs was overbearing - I could not even make out the smell of wood smoke until I stood almost directly over the small fire-pit in the packed dirt floor. The fire had died but bright coals remained. It had not been put out deliberately. It had died fairly recently, too - which helped confirm that I must have only slept for a few hours at most.
In one of the corners lay a filthy pile furs aid atop a layer dried grasses and pine needles. A cot of some fashion. Around the room were signs that several individuals had rested here - disturbances left by laying bodies and discarded bones apparently from some meal. In another corner a crude, three-legged stool lay on its side beneath a brace of skinned rabbits. The rabbits had been skinned but I saw no knife - I had not expected anybody would leave a valuable tool like a knife just lying about but it certainly would have brightened my day. Besides, whoever lived here was not a neat individual - or group.
I had moved to right the stool, seeking to rest when the howl sounded again. Much closer. It was followed shortly by another, and yet another and I cursed as I rushed to the door. The howls, unquestionably wolfish, had sounded far too close for comfort - so loud and clear, and lacking the dull quality the heavy air and oppressive forest granted most sounds. The howl could not have been more than some hundred or so meters distant. It had seemed to come from the edge of the clearing, where I had lain unconscious not half an hour previously. Another howl caused me to shudder.
As I went to see if the wolves were visible I made to pull the fur hangings aside. I snatched my hand back to my chest as it brushed against something wet and cold. Confused, I pushed past the edge of the curtain, careful not to touch the wetness again and let the dim light of the clearing reveal the nature of the liquid coating my fingers.
In the dim light I saw it was dark, perhaps brown or a deep red. My first thought was blood, and my heart leapt a beat. I brought it to my lips and allowed the tip of my tongue to touch for the briefest of seconds - the coppery tang of blood. My heart leapt another beat. I could not know it was Gill's - or human - but I felt that it must be. But the wolves - I heard no more howls, but from the shadows of the firs enclosing the clearing I saw indistinct shapes flowing between the great black trunks. The movement was accompanied by an eerie rustling and, beneath that, a whisper of snarls and grunts too distant to perceive clearly. It took me a moment, mind bound by terror as it was, that the shadows in the gloom were not the low, broad forms of wolves that I expected, but tall figures with gesturing and swaying arms. The posture with which they moved I recognized, and it came to me that I had been expecting the same of wolves - a lanky gait reminiscent of a large dog.
I caught myself holding my breath, and forced it out in a rush of heat and white mist in the cold air. The figures, there were several, began to coalesce around a spot I belatedly recognized as the place where I had been laying so recently. They seemed to convene and the susurrus of faraway inhuman voices intensified. After a few moments, crouched in the doorway, bloody hand still held as if to reach my mouth I was jolted from my enthralled observation when the figures suddenly stopped their apparent exchange and seemed to look up in my direction simultaneously. The heads shifted, and I imagined their eyes slowly following the obvious path left by Gill and then by me, before they slight movement stopped. I felt as if my gaze were being returned by the eyes of these people whoever, whatever they were, though I could not see their eyes at this distance and in this bad light. Regardless, I felt a chill independent of the temperature run down my spine uncontrollably. The feeling when a large predator, unrestrained and deadly casts it eyes on you.
I withered back into the dark interior of the hovel. The wet dog scent suddenly made too much sense to me. There were wolves who, I was sure, knew I was here. Wolves. Wolves that cast the tall, lanky silhouette of a man standing on his two feet? Perhaps I did not make the connection quite yet, but all the pieces had fallen into place. I am surprised that I didn't pass out once again, crouched there in the darkness. I remember looking to my bloodstained hand and back to the doorway.
Moving again I gathered my courage - or more accurately my fears and forced myself to push aside the uncured hides again, ignoring the wetness of the blood this time. I pulled my head and shoulders out into the cold and saw a troop (pack?) of the unrecognizable making their way across the snowy expanse of the clearing towards the hovel - and me. I couldn't tear my eyes from them. They met my gaze, motionless mid-stride.
Wolves.