Pilgrim by Sara Douglas

crouched among the branches of an everheart tree.

They reached the edge of the woods by mid-morning.

Beyond the trees, tempest reigned in the swirling grey miasma of Barzula‘s hour.

There was no storm as such—no roiling winds nor gusting hail—but merely the

overwhelming impression of a tempest waiting, waiting with gleaming teeth, to plunge into the

mind and sanity of everyone foolish enough to dare the open spaces.

Tendrils of the grey haze drifted through the air, clinging to everything it could find.

―Gods,‖ Leagh whispered by Zared‘s side. ―It‘s sickening! How will we manage to

survive that?‖

―It is not too late to turn back now,‖ Zared said. ―If you wish you can stay here.‖

He shifted his eyes to all within hearing distance. ―I would not begrudge anyone a fear

that would not let them leave these Woods.‖

Men stared back at him, but all stayed their ground.

Leagh shook her head slightly. I will stay with you, her eyes said.

Zared nodded to himself, satisfied, and turned his face back to the exposed landscape. He

hoped to every god in existence that Drago knew what he was saying when he swore shade

would protect them from this.

Once the miasma had dissipated, Zared waved his column forwards. The Strike Force

wheeling overhead, they rode silently out from the Woods into a desolate landscape.

The two white donkeys trotted some ten paces in front of the army, their ears flopping

with irritating cheerfulness. But Zared, Leagh, and every man and Icarii within the force, was

sickened by the sight that met their eyes, just as Faraday and Drago had been. The lush Arcness

Plains had been ravaged into a desiccated landscape, swept with the cold winds of Snow-month

and left hopeless with the touch of the Demons.

Bones lay scattered everywhere across the cracked earth.

―We will be lucky indeed to find water in this desert,‖ Herme said, pulling his horse up

beside Zared‘s.

Zared nodded. ―Pass the word back. We drink enough to sustain us. No more.‖

A movement to his left caught his eye. Something crawled out of a crack, scuttled several

paces, and dropped into another crack.

Zared narrowed his eyes, peering as hard as he could, but he could not make it out.

―Another one!‖ Leagh cried, pointing to a movement directly in front of them.

It stayed above ground long enough to be recognised…partly. This one was a lizard of

the variety that could normally be found hunting grasshoppers through the grasslands. But was it

hunting grasshoppers now?

Zared quietly sent back the order to stand ready. They‘d barely been out of the Woods a

half-hour—was it going to be like this the entire way to Carlon? Riding heart in mouth,

expecting attack by lizards and mice and sundry other insects and rodents?

Suddenly Leagh cried out. Her horse shied violently to one side, crashing into Zared‘s

mount, and almost throwing Zared to the ground.

He steadied himself, and grabbed at Leagh, making sure she was all right.

She nodded, her face tight, and they both looked down on the ground.

There were two lizards there, each half out of a crack in the earth, each tugging at what

remained of a baby‘s head.

Leagh gagged, and turned away.

―Ride on!‖ Zared ordered, his eyes hard, and the column wheeled to the left to avoid the

lizards.

Ahead, the donkeys started forward from where they‘d been waiting patiently.

Zared held his horse back for a moment, then spurred it forward, crushing both lizards

and the infant‘s head beneath its hooves.

They rode through the late morning, past noon, and into the early afternoon. Zared

pushed his men and horses as fast as he could, and yet not so fast they would be forced to

consume too much water.

The landscape did not change. The plains were stripped of grass back to the red, drift ing

earth. Cracks zigzagged as far as the horizon.

―And this is the depths of winter!‖ Leagh said to Zared. ―Imagine what it will be like next

summer.‖

Zared did not answer for a moment, and when he did speak, he kept his eyes straight

ahead. ―If we have not won out against these Demons by next summer, then I doubt we shall be

here to endure its horror.‖

Pray Drago finds this Sanctuary, Leagh thought. Pray all the gods of creation he finds it

soon. Yet even that thought did not comfort her. Unless this promised Sanctuary sat smack in the centre of Tencendor, then it would be nigh impossible to manage to evacuate all of the nation‘s

peoples into its safety.

And how does one evacuate a nation? Leagh wondered. How, if we must travel through

this kind of wasteland?

An hour after noon, the two donkeys abruptly halted, swung about, and stared at Zared.

He reined in his horse, returned the donkeys‘ stare briefly, then called a halt.

―Mid-afternoon draws nigh,‖ he said, and spoke to Herme. ―Quick! The shelters!‖

Herme turned without answering, and spoke urgently to the lieutenants and captains

behind him.

The army had practiced this manoeuvre a score of times while in the Silent Woman

Woods, but out here, so vulnerable, nervousness and haste made for thickened fingers. The

Strike Force dropped out of the sky, helping where they could, but even their normally

implacable temperaments were disturbed, and their agile fingers awkward.

Zared sat his horse, watching the sky, the horizon, anything, for some sign that Sheol‘s

time approached. The scouts had previously announced that the grey miasma swept over the land

in the blink of an eye…was there no warning? What if his sense of time was out and they all died in madness while still erecting their pavilions?

The donkeys slowly walked back towards the army.

―Zared, move!‖ Leagh said behind him, and jolted out of his thoughts, Zared swung his

horse about, casting his gaze over the army behind him.

The column of men and horses had rearranged itself into a vastly different formation of

seventy-five squares. Each square comprised several hundred men and horses, and each man had

unrolled his shade cloth and attached it to those of his neighbours with poles that were shared about.

Seventy-five squares of shade.

What happened if a storm hit, as was likely at this time of the year? What if the Demons

saw these tempting squares, and blew a tempest down upon them?

―Gods‘ help you, Drago,‖ Zared muttered, ―if this isn‘t enough!‖

He swung down from his horse, unrolled his own length of shade, and helped Leagh

attach it into the square they were assigned to.

He glanced anxiously about. ―Herme? Theod? Gustus?‖

Each man reported in. The squares were up. Everyone was under.

―Then we wait,‖ Zared said. ―And watch.‖

The donkeys shouldered their way under the square that sheltered Zared‘s company, and

stood to one side of Leagh, their heads turned out into the landscape.

Despair descended upon the land. It rippled out in grey concentric circles from Sheol‘s

location in the northern Skarabost Plains, breaking against the western borders of the Avarinheim

and Minstrelsea forests, but flowing smoothly south and west.

In the southern Skarabost Plains it flowed over the dreaming, ancient white horse.

Despair surged further south. The grey tide broke and screamed and wailed over the walls

of Tare and Carlon, snatching at the few dozen people who had not been fast enough inside.

It sailed straight over the shade that sheltered Zared‘s army, leaving them untouched.

But hardly unaffected.

Every member of that force watched the grey twilight areas beyond their shelter. They

could somehow feel the despair of that grey contagion, even though it did not seep beneath their shade. It felt as if a thousand eyes waited within the haze outside. Waited for a single toe to creep

unnoticed over the dividing line between madness and sanity. It felt as if ten thousand bony

fingers creaked and flexed out there, waiting for that mistake, that single instant it would take

those fingers to grab.

Leagh watched for ten minutes, and then could bear no more. She turned and buried her

face in Zared‘s shoulder, feeling his arms wrap about her.

―I do not know if I have the strength,‖ she whispered.

―You must have the strength,‖ he replied. ―You have no choice.‖

The donkeys crowded closer to the pair, and their warmth and apparently unruffable

cheerfulness gave both Zared and Leagh strength.

Within the hour, despair passed and the wasteland was once more safe to traverse.

But Zared did not break camp. There were perhaps some three hours before dusk and the

onset of the ravages of pestilence, but Zared did not think the effort of breaking camp, riding for

one hour, and then setting up camp again was worth the effort.

―We stay here until dawn has passed,‖ he said. ―Everyone has three hours to stretch their

legs, eat, forage for fodder, whatever, but half an hour before dusk, I want all back in here.‖