Brus (1)

Rain poured for days as though a hole had been punched in the sky, and in the end a thick fog settled over the grasslands. I’d collected the down payment on the commission, so I had no choice but to press on. Shurn was already a ruin, and I never managed the resupply I’d gone there for in the first place.

The face of the man with lifeless eyes who’d held out that silver coin surfaced for a moment, but I wiped him from my mind soon enough. I had finished the job, and he had paid the down payment. That was where our relationship ended.

…Damp.

I’d sheltered from the rain in clefts of rock and under trees, but it wasn’t enough to keep my leather armor from soaking through. Worse, the fog blanketing everything left water dripping steadily off my fingertips.

Surely mold or mushrooms won’t start growing on me.

For no particular reason I ran a hand over my breastplate, over the gaping hole a spear had punched in it. Having no need to preserve body heat, I’d walked straight on without a fire until now; tonight, though, it seemed I’d have to make camp, if only to dry my clothes. Unless I wanted to pick mushrooms off my own stomach for dinner, that is.

The weather was mercifully mild, chilly if anything. I walked a long while, breathing in the cool, sodden air, until the blurred outline of a forest resolved through the fog.

Good. I can find something to eat.

Of course, going hungry won’t kill me. Might get a little hungry, is all.

The forest turned out to be every bit as sodden as I was. Every time I brushed against the foliage, the drops beading on the leaves drummed against my helm, and the waterlogged earth dragged at my boots with every step. I roamed for hours like that without turning up so much as a small animal, let alone a single edible plant.

In the end I gathered a few of the driest branches I could find and settled in at the foot of a hill. The sun had gone down anyway, so I figured I might as well light a fire. Lucky, finding a decent spot to camp.

I piled up the branches with some grass and took out my flint. It didn’t take long for the fire to catch.

— FWOOSH!

Once the campfire had settled a little, I dropped down beside it.

Warm.

The burning flames struck me, all at once, as unfamiliar. Everything about that ardent color and that gentle heat was my opposite. I had lived a life utterly unlike a campfire.

In memories gone blurred under the weight of the years, I had once been a citizen of the twenty-first century. As best I can recall, there was nothing special about that life. I got an ordinary job, lived the way everyone else did, and died. Single, with no family or hometown to speak of, dead early, in my thirties. But isn’t that as common as dirt in this world?

I opened my eyes, and I was here. In many ways it was a barren world for a modern man to live in, but people managed to live here all the same. I let myself drift along with time as it slipped vaguely past, and so arrived at the present.

Across the long years of two lifetimes, had I never once burned like a campfire? Looking back, that was not quite true. I’d had my years of fire too.

I let myself remember them for a moment. They were happy as a dream, and just as far away. The worn-down memories felt precarious, as though they would scatter the instant I reached for them.

“I’ve gotten old.”

Judging by how maudlin I’ve become.

In the end I buried the faint memories again, deep on the far side of things. Some memories are worth something precisely because they’re over.

Just then the undergrowth across the fire shook hard. Not the wind. Something had moved it, deliberately.

“…No rest for me, is there.”

I got to my feet and picked up the sword I’d propped against a rock.

— Grrrrrrr.

What emerged from the darkness was an enormous wolf.

Drawn by the firelight?

Or perhaps it had been living here all along. The spot where I’d built my fire was about the only place in that soaked forest fit to lie down in, and that went for wolves as much as for me. Proof enough: there wasn’t just one wolf.

Three of them. Big, and none of them look thin — they’ve been eating well. So these are why I couldn’t turn up so much as a rabbit.

The lead wolf gave a chilling growl and sank into a crouch, ready to spring at any moment.

That one’s got the biggest head. It could kill an average horse with a single bite.

A wolf the size of an ox was, in itself, a misuse of the word wolf. It had no intention of dragging things out; drool ran from its jaws as though it meant to chew up the intruder in its territory then and there.

— HRAAWF!

They came at me at once, the biggest in front, a smaller one following behind it. Throat, shoulder: I clocked where they were aiming, and in that hair-trigger instant I made my decision.

Kill the leader first.

I twist my body, putting my weight into my hips. I grip the sword in both hands and drive it into the wolf’s neck in one motion. From there I bring the blade down, and the shredded neck comes away.

That was how it should have gone.

— CRACK!

At the instant of its leap the lead wolf changed direction and came in at my shoulder. Because I’d twisted my body, its teeth sank into my waist instead.

Abnormally fast for its size.

To make it worse, another one bit into my thigh. Red blood welled up and soaked the wolf’s face, and with a wet crunch the piece the big one had bitten down on tore free. Afraid the one on my thigh would slip away as well, I quickly tensed the muscle. I took the sword in a reverse grip and drove it deep into the neck of the wolf that couldn’t move with its teeth buried in me. The feel of tough hide tearing and bone shattering traveled up the blade into my fingertips.

As I pulled the sword free of the limp wolf’s neck, the big one was still chewing at the piece of my waist it had torn off. It didn’t come straight back at me, which told me it was working out how to handle me.

“If you won’t come, I will.”

I swung the sword horizontally, aiming for its legs. It slipped out of my sight like lightning, and in the same instant the other wolf at the rear lunged at me. I shoved my left hand into its maw and stabbed up through the jaw with the sword in my right. With only a slight resistance, the blade punched through its brain and out the far side of the skull.

— GRRAAGH!

In an instant the big one had my left shoulder in its jaws. If it was fast, then all I had to do was make it stop moving. While it tore at my shoulder I pulled my left hand free and hooked it around the wolf’s neck. Dropping low as though letting myself fall, I set to opening up its belly.

The dense muscle caught the blade, but I struck upward with my fist like driving a nail, and the sword went all the way in. The wolf paid it no mind and shredded my shoulder to pieces. I, for my part, went on cutting its belly open without a word.

The wolf fought hard. But once its entrails had all spilled out, it could no longer move. Its bite was so strong that no matter how I hauled at the jaw the teeth wouldn’t come loose, and when I forced it, my left arm tore off. Even after dying, the thing had made off with one of my arms.

“…”

There was no strength left in my body. Immortal or not, exhaustion still caught up with me, so I went back to the fire and dropped down hard beside it. Even for me, an arm or a leg coming off takes time to grow back.

Taking what comfort I could from the warmth of the firelight, I watched my left arm slowly regenerate, on and on. First the skeleton fits itself together, then nerve and muscle grow over it. It was a sight to make anyone at all grimace. Which was why it was only right to call undeath a curse.

“…Eladin.”

Yes. It was a curse. The last curse laid on me by the god who was mine alone.

“It’s all still so clear.”

She was a strange god. A god more human than any human I have ever known. She appeared in my life one day like a shooting star with no warning.

‘Roan. My Roan.’

This world is a land of religions and gods. There were more of them than you could count on ten fingers, and as many churches again. But she alone was different.

Eladin was a small god without a single worshipper, a god with no church to her name. Isn’t that a joke?

‘Become my follower. Live for me. Be grateful to me, and pray to me.’

So I decided to build her a church. Of course, I was the only follower. I was her only bishop, and her only paladin, and—

‘And in return, I too shall live for you.’

—her only lover.

They were days like a dream. So sweet, so happy, that I trembled with dread over when I would wake.

‘Roan.’

The thing I had feared happened.

‘Eladin, don’t say it.’

The appointed moment came, heartbreakingly indifferent.

‘I am afraid.’

‘Please. Please don’t say it.’

‘I am afraid that you too will hurt as I do, that you will die feeling this same pain.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Eladin.’

‘It is I who am sorry. I have left a great wound in Roan’s heart. Had I known it would come to this, I would never have appeared before you. I am sorry.’

She was dying.

In my arms, she apologized to me. I hated that past all bearing, and I wept.

‘So you must not die. Not until that wound has healed all the way. As your god, I bless you.’

That day I received the curse, and the blessing, of undeath.

I tore across every corner of the continent. Without eating or sleeping, I searched for one thing only: the reason she had appeared before me covered in blood.

There are not many things capable of wounding a god. Almost without meaning to, I concluded that another god had killed her, and the conclusion was sound.

It was several decades more before I found a thread to follow. I spent decades chasing it and gathering what I could until I had the name of the god who killed her, and then decades more pouring myself into wiping that god’s church off the earth.

That was a life that burned, if ever a life did.

Lucseon.

Decades more went by after that, and here I am. I beat to death every last group that served Lucseon, and Eladin did not come back, and my heart stayed hollow. As for killing Lucseon in person, the god was too far away, somewhere no human hand could reach. Though what god of what world isn’t?

Dregs, left behind after everything had burned long and loud. A heap of ash worth nothing at all.

Was there a better way to describe what I am now? Why am I alive? What separates me, who has lost his purpose and merely goes on living, from a corpse?

That question, worn down now until only a faint outline of it remained, I wiped from my mind.

At some point my left arm had grown back completely.

Any town of a certain size has its walls and guards as a matter of course, and Brus was no exception. The fog had not lifted entirely, but it had thinned enough to make out what lay ahead. For a little while I stood watching the line of people filing into the town.

Walls that were not tall but looked solid, and guards with iron weapons glaring at the queue, held the gate.

The inspection doesn’t take long.

Getting held up at the gate and losing time would be a disaster and a half. After a short deliberation, I decided to walk in mixed in with the crowd, with no particular disguise.

“…”

The moment I came near, every one of them clamped a hand over their nose. I put on a brazen face and pretended not to notice. Though the face I actually had on was an iron helm.

The soldiers were not exactly throwing heart and soul into the inspection, so the line waiting to get in shrank quickly.

“Next!”

Before long my turn came, and I stepped up in front of the guard without expression.

“That smell…”

The guard staggered. Was it really that bad?

“…I got covered in filth a few days ago. That’s what brought me to Brus, in fact.”

The guard’s eyes ran over my leather armor, which by now was little more than rags.

“…So it appears. Show me your papers.”
“Papers? Are those necessary?”

The soldier pointed the butt of his spear at my hip.

“You’re wearing a sword. And by the look of you you’re not central army — some mercenary who’s been knocking around God knows where. We can’t just let that sort in off the street.”

A hundred years ago, was it. A long time ago I did have a mercenary license, issued in the capital. I couldn’t remember where it had got to, or even when I’d lost it. Once you’re past two centuries old, you naturally forget the small things.

When I just stood there blankly, the guards’ faces turned ugly in a flash.

“No papers, then piss off.”

I let out a short sigh and, in the end, brought my hand to my hip.

“I’d hoped not to have to use this one… A pity.”