given the dangers on the road, most travelers were more than happy to have one more among their number, even if I clearly looked incapable of defending anything or anyone. But those were well-trod byways patrolled by Hornmen, and the duration was never all that long.
Here… we’d clearly left behind traffic, and commerce, and community. All the things ordinary people clung to as they moved from place to place. There was nothing at all out here, except the unknown, and large quantities of it. Emptiness in all directions. Or the appearance of emptiness. Who knew what things crept or slithered among the grass, or buried beneath it.
And Braylar was correct about the dark-I’d never seen the stars look so sharp, and the crowned moon was in its full glory, both the moon itself and its single ring bleeding bright light everywhere. Sleeping in the wilderness didn’t prove restful. The pots gently chimed against each other throughout the night. The wagon rocked on its springs, driven by the wind, and while the flaps were secured front and back, they billowed like the sails of a small ship as cold drafts found their way into the wagon and beneath my blankets.
I finally fell into a fitful slumber when I heard Lloi ride up. She unsaddled her horse, fed it, saying gentle things in her tongue, which must have been soothing, because I went back to sleep immediately. When I awoke at dawn, she was gone again. I rose and stretched, splashed some water on my face, and climbed out the front of the wagon. Braylar was finishing rolling up his sleeping mat.
After filling our bellies, we took care of the other tasks that needed tending: feeding the horses, harnessing them, checking all the straps and wheels and axle and tongue and anything else that moved for something in need of repair. Discovering nothing, we set off. I took my place alongside him on the bench and asked, “Would you like me to get the writing table? Is there anything you’d like to record or dictate?”
Without looking at me he said, “Record the grass.”
Most of my previous patrons could hardly stop their mouths-they regaled me with mundane minutia and inane stories, most of which involved the glories of mercantile conquest. Hardly riveting, but it was why they hired me. Pollus the apothecary, old wheezy Winnozin the priest, Nullo the foul-mouthed (and foul-smelling) tanner, Lektin the pinched-faced banker. Dull and duller, the whole lot. Even the Lady Anzella, who inherited her husband’s shipping business after the plague took him, and managed not only to keep it afloat, but to make it thrive… beyond the novelty that she was a woman entrepreneur, and a successful one at that, she was just as mannish in her ability to bore a person to tears.
They all shared one thing in common-they loved to talk about themselves, and it was my job to keep them prattling as long as possible, asking as many questions as I could think of to keep their narratives (and my employment) going. However, few jobs lasted more than a year; only one patron kept me on for near two. Being social-climbing burghers who’d generally made their own fortunes rather than inheriting them in noble fashion, they clutched those hard-earned coins tight, which ultimately always proved at odds with just how long-winded they were inclined to be. They would have talked forever if they hadn’t had to pay for the recording.
But the captain seemed completely disinterested in talking to me at all, except when absolutely necessary, and rebuffed most attempts at conversation. So long as I was paid, I wasn’t particularly bothered by this, but it was queer, and more than that, had the effect of stretching the hours out interminably.
Sitting inside the wagon, I often looked out the back. Except for the cloud of dust and absence of horses, it was identical to the front-an endless trail surrounded by an endless expanse of tall green grass, rustling as far as the eye could see. We couldn’t have been more alone, and it felt as if we were truly the last travelers on Earth, doomed to travel these steppes together forever.
The next day passed exactly as the previous day had. The only real deviation in our journey was that Lloi was absent. She didn’t return in the middle of the night. She didn’t return at all.
The following day, after our usual morning rituals and preparations, Braylar summoned me to join him. When I took my seat, he glanced at me briefly. “You never look well-rested. I’m beginning to think that you don’t have it in you.”
I didn’t bother countering that I slept just fine when I wasn’t trapped on a wagon in the wilderness with the least loquacious man in the known world.
We sat in our customary silence for a time when Braylar finally said, “Have you grieved, Arki?”
I didn’t answer right away, equally surprised he was asking me a question and uncertain what he expected as a response.
“No? I thought as much. You haven’t lived until you’ve grieved. Death, life, together, the same. And if you’ve only experienced life you’re only half-alive. Of course, there are many kinds of grief. When we’re betrayed, when a lover leaves us in the middle of the night, when our fortunes overturn and dump us penniless in a ditch. Anywhere there’s loss, there’s a little grief. But they’re minor, and quick to disappear. We can take a new lover, take revenge on our betrayer, take the fortune of someone else. The losses can be recouped, and this is what makes these griefs minor, fleeting, inconsequential.
“But when you lose something that can never be replaced, and more particularly, someone, then you’ll know grief, true grief. The kind that tortures and warps and threatens to destroy, the kind that turns your insides to ash, that draws you toward madness or your own death. This grief will never leave you, ever. It will change shape, and if you survive its initial ravages, it will subdue, but it will never leave, periodically springing up again to catch you unaware with a new fierceness, like a plague that lies dormant for years only to return again with renewed ferocity. You’ll never fully escape it. For your sake, I hope you experience this grief soon. You’ll be that much closer to living a complete life.”
After that happy outburst, he lapsed into silence again. I was about to return to the wagon when he pointed out a figure on the horizon. At first I was worried it might be a Grass Dog, but his smile told me it was only his Grass Dog. When Lloi finally reined in next to us, Braylar said, “Report. What have you seen?”
She jerked a thumb in the direction she came from. “More than seen. Found.”
When she didn’t immediately expound, Braylar sighed. “Yes?”
“Best see it for yourself. I could spend the time telling you about it, but without presupposing I know what you’ll say or do, I know you’ll be wanting to just see it yourself anyway. So, you want me to lead you there?”
“How far away is this find of yours-should we follow on horse?”
“Horse be quicker, sure as spit. But seeing as to what I saw, I wouldn’t be leaving the wagon untended, Captain Noose, not if it were my wagon. Which it weren’t, of course. Just saying.”
Braylar seemed to be balancing between amusement and annoyance. “Very well, I’ll heed your cryptic and garbled advice. Wagon it is.”
Lloi’s horse trotted ahead of us. Braylar snapped the reins and had the horses moving at a fairly brisk pace- we rumbled over the ground, rocking as we went. Still, Lloi’s horse was quicker, even with its short legs, and she maintained enough distance between us that she was only a silhouette on the horizon, stopping on occasion to ensure the wagon didn’t fall too far behind.
Finally, Lloi stopped and got down off her horse. Braylar looked at me and said, “Pay attention. I believe this might be something worth recording.” Then he hopped off the wagon and it rocked gently on its springs. I got caught on a nail getting down, nearly tearing my tunic, and by the time my feet were on the ground, Braylar was striding after Lloi.
I hurried to catch up, but there was no need-they stopped a short distance away before a large area where the grass had been trampled down. That’s when I noticed the stench. Two odors intertwined, instantly recognizable to anyone who’s paid a visit to the butcher-meat and death.
As I approached, I saw something past Lloi’s shoulder, rising up above the grass. One of the largest creatures I’d ever seen was lying on its side before us. Easily as big as our wagon, perhaps bigger still.
It had short, squat legs, so that its belly must have swung very low to the ground, but now that belly was torn open, its thick, tangled, ropy innards strewn along with a great deal of dried blood across the flattened grass.
After a moment, Braylar and Lloi walked on, but never having seen anything like this before, I couldn’t help circling and taking account. Most of its body was covered in bulbous scales of dark gray, almost charcoal, interspersed with strange tufts of stiff hair. It had a short tail, a shorter neck, and a wedge-shaped head. Its mouth was agape, huge purple tongue lolling over knobby teeth, eyes like small black stones still open under a broad, bony ridge. Large flies scattered from the open wound at its belly as I came close, buzzing their protest. Its hide, more of an armor, really, was marked with white scars or punctures, particularly around the neck and head.
