Chương 28: The Drowned Orchard

Soil and weeds had found their way in between the wheel-ruts, green and persistent and soft, and that is where I walked. For my entire life, my feet had walked on only three surfaces: hard-packed dirt, stone or wood. The very experience of walking on organic material was delightful, and I revelled in every step. Around me, the scenery had changed from the young vineyards that were draped across the smaller hills just outside Varenza: now the trees were growing taller, and closer to the road.

Next to me, preferring the firmness of the stone, Corso was humming a tune I had heard a thousand times before, yet today there was something new there. A kind of hope and excitement. Or perhaps that was just how I heard it, how my heart added to the music. The dense fog had followed us as we walked down the road heading east and north out of Varenza. The eastern road was one of the old ones, with coarse stonework, firm and solid, which is also why it was favoured by travellers and merchants.

Twice since leaving Varenza we had heard the rumbling of wheels on stone behind us, and we had stepped to a side and watched the caravan pass us by. The first was only three wagons, pulled by massive horses and guarded by a handful of hard-looking adventurers that ran alongside. I had shouted a question about where they were headed, receiving only a look from one of the guards. The second caravan had been long and taken several minutes to pass.

Thirteen large wagons and smaller carts in between, with dozens of guards riding high on sleek horses. When asked, they freely shared their destination as Oenipons. Nobody quite knew exactly how old these old roads were; they had always been there. New roads would shift and break up with the seasons, needing frequent repair and maintenance. But the old roads were built for permanence, surviving season after season, for centuries.

I recalled overhearing conversations in the Serravalle square that the old roads extended for hundreds or even thousands of miles, going north, and east and west. The travellers had described cities and villages spaced days or weeks apart: pockets of humanity strung like beads on a necklace. It was when I thought about those tales that I suddenly remembered something else. I had mostly ignored it at the time, and since then my mind had relegated it to an unsubstantiated tall tale.

"Corso," I said, and when the humming stopped I continued.

"In your… In your obsession with adventuring, did you ever hear stories from cities and settlements far away from Varenza?"

"Sometimes," he admitted.

"But mostly, I did not listen then. They are just more places like Varenza, right? People doing their thing. Not like the stories of dungeons and caves and treasure and monsters." He paused, then asked, "What about it?"

"Well, those were the stories I preferred. Travellers talking about Ragusa or Castelforte. Their customs and people, the trading goods they would purchase or sell. The artisans that they met. They… They are not all like Varenza. Some are similar, but there are differences. I found those differences fascinating." Corso looked at me with a strange smile and gestured for me to continue.

"Varenza is built on commerce. Florins are the lifeblood not just of trade, but of how we live. If you think about it, if you study the patterns, you will find that our society has been constructed, like a building, where the flow of money serves as our very foundation. It is easy to think that to be the same everywhere, but I do not think it is. And once you change the foundation, the lifeblood, of a society, that has consequences in how they live their lives.

For example, if we look to the far west, we have the Arvernian tribes." Corso walked quietly beside me, listening patiently as I told him of thoughts and theories shaped when I was a young man and put on a shelf. I found within me a strange joy in taking the theories down from their storage shelf and revisiting them, inspecting them again with the added perspective of two and a half decades of lived experience. But it was the blue wagon I had meant to tell him about.

"I must have been thirteen. Maybe fourteen. It was just before I stopped going to the Serravalle altogether… But I remember the blue wagon. It was unlike many others, pulled by oxen instead of horses and with wheels at least three times the width that was normal. Something about it made me curious, and when the caravan guards dispersed on arrival I had followed some of them to a nearby tavern. I found a nearby table, and listened. That is why I remember this so well now — that was different.

I did not use to do that."

"Go on."

"Well. The tavern girl asked them from whence they had come, and they said Vindobona, a place I had not heard about. Not since then either. Apparently, it is past Oenipons, but I did not think anyone ever travelled past there."

"And?"

"With their meals served, they had talked about their cook. He had been part of the caravan going out, but he did not come back. He stayed in Vindobona."

"Why is that important?"

"The reason why he did not return is the interesting thing," I said.

"They said this place, this city. It had something like the Mandate, and it was not. And the cook had received a Class."

"What?!" Corso exclaimed.

"How can that be?"

"I don't know."

"No Auction? No cost? He… just received it?"

"Some cost, I think. They did not have an auction. No details were shared, but there was a gathering of men, and some men were chosen by this other Mandate. The cook had stumbled into the gathering by accident. The caravan guards spoke of a harshness in the men of that place, and that they would not return no matter the price." Corso did not speak for a long time. Then I saw from his expression that he had made the connection.

"And you think the ring, your class, the old beggar… Are like that. Another Mandate?"

"I do not know. Yet."

By noon, the fog had lifted, leaving behind a bright winter's sun and a piercing winter's cold. The signet ring rested in a small leather pouch hung like a pendant against my chest, under my shirt. Every now and then I would bring it out and touch it, and every time my skill told me that we were heading in more or less the right direction. By now, I had mostly stopped worrying about the invisible threat having followed us out of Varenza.

From time to time I would look back, but except for the caravans, the road behind us remained empty. We found ourselves in no great hurry, walking at an even pace and rather seeking unconsciously to draw this moment out. Our first adventuring journey, Corso had called it. For me, it was my first journey at all, outside the Varenzan walls that had now long disappeared behind us, ochre stone reduced to a narrow line beneath the hills before fading altogether. They had laughed at us, yesterday in the Collegium.

I still carried the embarrassment and anger at their words and attitudes, but I was also clear-headed enough to recognise the importance of the message that was conveyed alongside their snickering derision: the wilds were dangerous, and we really did not know what we were doing. We were two city fools bumbling around in what would become wilderness in not too long. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Our plan had originally been to spend some time today learning what we could. Walk outside, learn the landscape and the lay of the land. Sister Amalia's story had changed that, and if anything could mar my contentment, it was that current of apprehension.

"Corso," I said then.

"What even is a corrupted animal? A monster?"

"The same," he answered.

"A monster is just an animal which has been corrupted… Corrupted beyond any recognition."

"But why? What causes this corruption?"

"Nobody really knows, I think," he said.

"But the stories all agree: the further away from Varenza, from people, that you get, the worse it gets. They say the safe zone is about a day's travel from the city. Some think it has to do with the Mandate. It protects us in Varenza, and it holds any corrupting influence away. Go outside that, and…" He gestured to a treeline not too far away, hiding rows of shadows.

"The animals twist."

"Should we have brought a sword?" I asked.

"A spear?"

"Do you know how to use a sword or spear?" he asked back, then continued.

"No, and neither do I." He grew pensive for a moment, and then he echoed my own thoughts back at me.

"I have been thinking, Vale. Those idiots in the Collegium, there was a point buried there. You have your class, your strength. I'm guessing you can move pretty fast now if called for, but you know nothing about any fighting. We have a solid iron bar. We could pick up a sturdy stick. But if we are serious about doing this—""We need to get you a class, don't we?" I interrupted.

"And weapons. Maybe armour." Instead of the grin I expected in return, Corso was serious.

"We do. We've been walking for, what… a couple of hours now. If we don't find this treasure soon, are we at risk of encountering one of these corrupted beasts? Do we need to consider turning back already?"

"The Auction is only a few weeks away," I said.

"If we can get to the treasure before then, that changes everything." He nodded and continued my thought.

"I get a proper class, and suddenly the Black Band is a proper company. And without the treasure, no Auction, no class."

"And without the class," I said in a low voice, "this expedition can turn bad if we do not take care." Suddenly, and as if in response to our worries, a tearing sound came from below the road. Wet roots parting, then the soft thud of something striking the earth. We just had to speak about dangers, did we not. I stopped. Corso took several more steps, then he noticed and looked back.

"What?" I held out one hand, gesturing for quiet. Beneath us, among the trunks at the bottom of the slope, a broad dark back moved through the dead grass. For a moment I mistook it for a fallen log shifting in the mud. Then it lifted its head. A sow. Six piglets rooted around her, striped brown and cream, turning the soil with their small snouts. One had found a windfallen apple and was worrying it with more determination than success. Corso breathed in sharply and began to move back to me.

He turned to expose the travel pack he was carrying on his back.

"Unfasten the rod, and give it to me." I was as quiet as I was able to, unfastening the leather straps and taking the iron rod. Then I stepped past Corso, whispering "No," as I did so.

"Stay behind me. Retreat quietly." We began to back away to mild protestations from Corso, but I was the classer here. The sow returned to the earth, but her ears remained pointed towards us. I could hear each hard exhalation through her snout, the scratch of every hoof and the tiny quarrel around the apple with a clarity that made them seem much nearer than they were. The smallest piglet broke from the others and scrambled up the slope. Towards us. It reached the road not twenty feet away, saw us and squealed.

The sow's head came up. Something changed through the line of her body: the rear legs gathering beneath her, the shoulders dropping, the snout turning until it pointed directly at us. I understood what would happen before she moved.

"Corso." Then she charged. She came uphill with appalling speed, throwing wet leaves behind her. Corso turned the wrong way. I caught the back of his coat and pulled. The world lurched. One moment we stood in the road; the next I had dragged him across the shallow ditch and behind the trunk of an oak. His feet struck the ground only once between, and I heard his sharp cry of pain. The sow passed close enough that mud from her flank struck my trousers. She wheeled below us.

I saw the second charge forming in the shift of her weight, and I read her body. Something new and instinctive told me of the direction of her charge, and I stepped into it. My arm, the bar, was already swinging, and moments before we would come together in a great clash I stepped to one side, whacking her along the side as I did so. Squealing in pain and anger, the sow turned, much faster than her size and momentum made seem possible.

She lowered her head and was about to charge again, but then a piglet squealed from the treeline not far away. The sow's head lifted slightly, and she began to shuffle in the direction of her offspring, watching me the whole way. Finally, she reached her piglets, and we began to back away from her, retreating one careful pace at a time. Only when the animals were hidden by the trees, and we were back on the road, did we relax. Corso winced and rubbed his right shoulder.

He raised his elbow, slowly, then lowered it again.

"I'm sorry." He glanced back towards the trees.

"Better than her tusks." Then he paused a heartbeat, and said, "You lifted me."

"Yes." I looked at the hand that had seized him. I had moved before deciding to move. I had seen the charge in the animal's body, crossed several paces and hauled a grown man with me as though all three acts belonged to the same thought.

"Your Class," Corso said.

"That was encouraging."

"That was just a normal boar. We were seconds away from the Black Band naming ourselves unironically." Corso grunted, and nodded, and tried to find the tune of his humming as we continued. By the time we recovered the signet's bearing, the grassy hills and cut-down forests had yielded to reeds and, with increasing frequency, small ponds and puddles of water. Waterfowl rested on their surfaces, sometimes greeting us and making us jump.

I noticed a crow watching me from a tree, and that drew my eye to another tree and another crow. And then I took it all in: the land around me had once been planted. Trees stood in neat rows. Most had succumbed to rot and decay, but some still survived, hanging on. Some even held apples hanging from their branches. Water stains marked their trunks as high as my knee. The Drowned Orchard, I thought, and now my skill pulled us off the road. Up ahead, I saw something narrow crossing the mud.

Corso pointed as we approached.

"A drain?" It was too small. A path no wider than two fingers had been cleared through the dead leaves. Tiny prints crowded its packed surface, but the edges ran remarkably straight. It passed between two roots and disappeared beneath a mound of stones.

"Rats?" I asked. Three more paths met it at the mound. Not tangled tracks, but separate routes joining at clean angles. Beside one, two narrow grooves marked the mud for several inches before vanishing among the prints. Corso prodded one with a twig.

"Busy rats."

"Organised rats," I muttered. City rats ran everywhere at once. These appeared to have roads. A clipped length of reed lay beside the junction, its end pared to a slant. I picked it up, found nothing that explained it and set it back where it had been.

"Like small marching armies," Corso said. I looked at the paths again.

"Do not be ridiculous." I lifted my eyes from the weird rat paths and saw what looked like an abandoned farmstead. Wooden buildings had long ago rotted and decayed, and the ring pulled us towards the only intact structure. The well stood near the centre of the lowest ground. Its waist-high stone rim had split on one side, and two old and gnarled trees leaned over it. No bucket, rope or roof remained.

Branches covered the opening, and I noticed that several of them had broken inward recently, exposing pale wood beneath the bark. I put my hand on the rim and looked down. Cold air touched my face.

"Here," I said.

"Below." Corso peered into the darkness.

"Of course it is." We cleared the branches, and Corso looped our newly purchased rope around the trunk of one tree and then the other, and then he leaned his full weight against the knot.

"Lantern first," he said. We lowered one. The light descended past courses of rough stone, turning slowly at the end of the rope. Twenty feet. Thirty. Then the lantern stopped. Corso marked the rope with chalk and pulled the lantern back up.

"Your turn," he said. I tied the rope around my waist, put one foot over the rim and found a hold between the stones. The first ten feet were easy. Below that, the mortar had washed out in places, leaving gaps deep enough for my fingers. Halfway down, the shaft widened. The old, rough stones ended at a shelf of fitted blocks. Below them, the masonry changed completely: pale, close-jointed and smooth despite its age. The later well had been driven through something older.

The stones reminded me of the stones in the burial chamber. I climbed the remaining distance and found firm footing beneath the widened shaft.

"Corso," I called.

"Come down." Corso descended the rope with considerably more complaint. When he reached the bottom, we lifted the lantern together. An arch stood behind us. Beyond it, fitted steps descended into darkness. The walls were faced in pale stone, their joints fine enough that my knife could not have entered them. A carved line ran along both sides of the passage at shoulder height, disappearing with the light. Corso's hand settled on my shoulder.

"Vale," he said softly.

"This is not a well." No. Someone had sunk a well into the roof of an older structure. And that structure continued below us.