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Post by Mister Buch on Aug 13, 2012 12:46:06 GMT 1
I've got the first draft of chapter 2 down, and I thought I'd post it and ask for all your criticisms again
I'm not going to make a habit of this, don't worry -- I just could use a few opinions at this early stage. ;D There is a lot of stuff I'm not sure about in this one.
Also, as of this chapter, I think I have to abandon all pretension of it being a children's story. There is some blood and stuff, and I like the way that turned out.
Anyway - if anyone reads or has an opinion, I'll be very grateful.
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CHAPTER TWO The Mouth of Red River
You discover, after a long walk, that the man's name is Durand. His voice still sounds a little bit strange to you. It is deep, loud and flat, and yet you always find yourself moving your ear toward him when he speaks. Something in his pronunciation makes it seem as if he shushes himself every time his mouth closes.
Your walk takes you along the edge of the water, on the outskirts of a thick, dark forest. It looks like the town you just left: lazily-arranged logs, sticking-out upwards. Perhaps because you are tired, the air feels very crisp and sharp in your lungs. There is an unpleasant taste, like snapped plant stems on your tongue, so you try to breathe through your nose. There are flies here and there, ordinary black flies, and the ground seems a little soft and wet. Durand has said little in all this time, but you have said even less. He is not particularly rude, but he seems to have little to say. Whenever you have asked him a question he has turned to you and answered it clearly and in detail, with one exception. When you asked him where he was from, all he said was "Very far away, over the sea." You don't press him on this. Of course you wonder why he dresses so strangely and what his business is, but you don't ask. Every time you are about to, you remember Talmir Giantkiller's face and you say nothing.
The walk goes on and the sky grows darker. Eventually you notice Durand nearly tripping over a mound of hard soil, after which he sighs for a long time and slows his pace. A second later, he stops altogether and looks at you. "Are you tired?" he asks you, and you shake your head. You're not in the least bit tired.
He nods respectfully, but sits down by the river anyway. He glances at you, then unties the heavy bag from his shoulders.
"What do you carry in there?" you ask, quietly.
"I have food for my trip, and a few tools. Don't worry, there will be enough for us both."
"Where are you going?" You wonder why you never thought to ask him this until now.
Durand runs his smooth white hand over his mouth and chin as he thinks. "A place called Shiloft," he says, looking up at you. "It is my home."
"But you said you were from over the sea."
"Yes." He smiles warmly. "A long time ago. I have been in this country for years now."
You say that you have never heard of Shiloft.
"No, I expect not. It is small. And of little consequence." Then he makes a noise as if he is choking, and watches your eyes. You wonder if there might be an insect on your face. "There will be danger along the way," he says, still looking.
You must have smiled at that, because he seems to understand what you're thinking, and nods again. You decide to sit down by the river with him.
As you make yourself comfortable, you see Durand reaching into the bag. He retrieves a curious object, made from the same dull, rust-coloured metal as his sword, but thin and hollow. It is shaped like a ball, carefully smoothed-out like the sun or a full moon, and has a long, thin, hollow stem sticking out of the top. There are a few little holes at the bottom of the ball, but you can't imagine what purpose they have.
Staring at the object, you wonder what its purpose might be. It looks useless.
Durand holds it firmly by the stem, his large fingers making a fist around it, and lowers it into the water of the river. For a long moment you stare at him, holding this thing under the surface like a very lazy fisherman hoping the catch will wander into his net. Finally he places his thumb on the top of the stem and lifts the device out of the water. He gives it a little shake, dries it off and holds it in the air, just as still.
With another sigh, stretches his leg out toward you. There is wet blood on his big toe.
When Durand releases his thumb from the top of his device, water from the river flows out through the holes at the bottom of the sphere and lands on Durand's foot, washing it clean. A second later, he replaces his thumb on the hole at the top and the water stops flowing. The holes at the bottom of the device are still there, but no water passes through them.
This is impossible.
"How did y... how did you do that?" you ask. The forest before you is silent, which makes your sudden shout seem even louder.
Durand just widens his eyes and says, "I stubbed my toe on some clay."
"No, I mean when you summoned the water!"
"Oh."
"Is it magic?"
He laughs at you without meaning to. You have not seen his smile before, but it is wide, stupid and ugly. His teeth show and they are as white as the rest of him. "No, child, it is not magic."
"But then..."
"Yes?"
"But then where is the water coming from?" He laughs again, and you manage not to call him a name.
"I'm sorry, child. I did not know you had never seen a water thief before. Where I was born, they were very common. We used them to count the hours, and to prepare food. I always keep one with me."
"But where is the water coming from?"
More laughter. It is deep and makes his flat belly shake. "From inside the water thief," he says, once he has finished making fun of you.
You stare again at the orange-ish, yellowish, greyish metal ball on a stick.
"The water comes in from the river through these holes at the bottom," he says, speaking slowly as if to an infant or an idiot, "And then when I move my thumb..."
He releases his thumb from the top of the stem, and more water flows from the ball, onto the ground. He replaces the thumb and it immediately stops. There is no mechanism in this thing: no buttons or switches or levels. It is just hollow metal.
"But it's impossible!" you say, because it clearly is.
"If it were impossible, it would not have happened."
"But... then it's magic!"
"No. I cannot perform magic. Only God can."
"But..."
"You are about to ask me what it is that stops the water from coming out of the bottom?" He holds the thing up, tilts it, to show the holes.
You nod very fast.
"I do not know."
You don't know what you want to say exactly, but you know you want to say it very loud. This man has just used magic to wash his foot, but he doesn't even believe in it. You are annoyed. This time, at least, he does not laugh. He just pours some more water on his toe, allows the rest of the ball's contents to flow into his throat, puts the 'water thief' back into his bag and stands up.
"Come on," he says. "We can't afford to rest yet."
For the rest of the night's walk, you watch Durand more carefully and with more reverence, wondering what other spells he knows. Now that you have amused him, however, he seems happier to talk. When you ask him about the forest, he tells you its size and what settlements it borders. You ask him if there are wolves around and he says there probably are not. There is not enough space for a good pack, and not enough distance from the villages for them to be safe. There might be foxes, he says, and he looks at you apologetically.
"How far away is Shiloft?" you ask, wondering what sort of danger he had in mind if not wolves.
"Many days' walk," he says. "For now, we follow the Red River. It becomes a lake soon, and we will need to stop there. In the morning we will go North, through the Valley of Eris."
You look at the river, which has been growing wider and louder all the time. It is not red. At this time of night it looks as grey as anything else, but you remember it being a greenish, greyish blue before the two of you set out.
--
It is subtle, but over the next half an hour you notice Durand's demeanour becoming more and more serious. He speaks less often and walks much more carefully. The forest to your left has become more of a field with the occasional tree, some of them a little thin and bent, and you are walking uphill. The night has even started to brighten. It must be getting close to daybreak, but you are still not at all tired.
Durand stops walking again, very suddenly like before, but deliberately. You look around, but all you see is a single red rose in amongst the grass. Durand looks at it, and then very slowly moves forward, craning his neck forwards, as if trying to make something out.
"I have business here," he says, and he turns to face you fully. The look on his face is very severe, like it was in the tavern, and you wonder what the strange traveller is thinking. His left hand moves very quickly and suddenly seems to be holding his sword. "You must wait here for me," he says. "Quietly, and without moving. If I do not come back before dawn, go back the way we came until you reach the inn."
He doesn't wait for your reply, but runs off, straight ahead. Curiously, he makes less noise than when he was walking. For the briefest of moments you consider actually doing as he told you, and then, of course, you run after him.
A few paces further up the hill, there are two more red roses. One of them has been flattened by somebody's boot. A few strides further still, there are seven more of the flowers, scattered about. And when you look up after counting them, you see hundreds more.
The long, sloping hill you have been climbing reaches it summit right ahead of you, right where the river becomes a wide, shimmering lake. It is surrounded by bushes of red roses. Red roses lie scattered about the floor leading up to it like a carpet. There are red roses covering thick, round, clumps of stems, protruding from the water and growing up and out, like floating clouds of red. There is a thick, hardy dam of rose-bush at the river's mouth, slowing and controlling the speed of the water downhill. There are towers of red, where the roses have grown upwards and climbed around old trunks or posts, which surround the lake on all sides and in a beautifully irregular pattern. And there are red flowers floating in the water. All over the surface.
Deep in the red, on the other side of the lake, there is something moving. It takes you a few seconds to recognise it as a person. Durand is slowly creeping towards something. It is hard to follow him with your eyes since he constantly disappears behind the bushes and then emerges off to one side, or further along than you would expect. Suddenly he leaps from behind one of the towers of roses, and you see the shape of his sword more than you see him, straight ahead of you, but too far away to hear. The sword is quite short, you think. Not as long as the swords you've seen before. It's hard to imagine Durand using it with a shield, like a knight or a soldier. The sword jams into something, and then Durand pulls it out and slashes it sideways. You see another man's body now. It falls down, rustles the rose-branches around it, and then it's gone again.
You run. Towards what you just saw, around the side of the lake, as fast as you can. The sound of your own heavy, painful breaths drowns out the sound of your footsteps against the twigs and petals and thorns, but you don't care. Your eyes scan the horizon carefully, looking for moving shapes against the brightening sky, The field roses climb on top of everything and on top of each other, and soon you are trying not to trip as you run over intertwined clutches of thick brambles.
The sword reveals itself again, and it plunges straight down, fast, followed by Durand's fist, wrapped around its hilt, and his straight, sinewy arm. You can't see what the blade hits, but you are able to make it out more clearly. You're getting close.
There is a shout, deep and without form, like an animal's, and suddenly two figures rise up from the ground and hurl themselves forward. You can see the buckles on their belts and the shape of their hair. And then you see Durand's little white cloak and his bronze sword. The weapon does not exactly flash, but it swings very quickly. There are more screams, all of them higher and more frantic than before. One, you realise, belongs to a woman. She screams the word 'no' a lot, and you find that you can't move.
Durand's sword-arm keeps going, slashing at the two men the way an ordinary person would wave off a fly that was bothering him. Sometimes it bounces off something and other times it just slows down for a moment. There are grunts that shush themselves at the end, and finally two more swords emerge.
The rest of Durand's swordfight is very short. The two bigger blades lunge at him. One of them wobbles. Durand stabs both of his attackers faster than you can see, and they fall down on twisting legs, landing with a heavy soft sound. The woman, wherever she is, keeps yelling 'no' and you see Durand suddenly staring at you. A second later, he ducks down and he's gone again.
And it's only then that you realise there is a dagger at your throat.
There is one more man, and he is right behind you. Your left hand shakes very fast and you feel a hot, painful pressure coming from behind your nose and eyes. The man's breath is hot too, and you wonder how you didn't hear it until now.
"You stop where you are!" the man behind you yells. Right in your ear. "You stop there and drop the sword, and you kneel down!" His voice cracks a little bit.
Nothing happens for a long time. The man shouts, louder. "You throw down the sword I said!"
Durand throws the sword. It appears on your right, as if from nowhere, and as you turn your head you feel the sharpness of that dagger's edge. It is not as smooth as you would imagine. It's almost jagged at one end, like a kitchen knife.
You and the man stare at the sword for about seven seconds, and then there is a sound behind you. Durand kills the man with his hands. The dagger falls to the ground and silently gets lost in the roses. You still can't move, but your arm isn't shaking any more.
Durand's face appears, slowly and breathing heavily, and studies you. He doesn't look worried, or angry, or happy or excited. There is sweat on his forehead, but it already looks cold. He just breathes and looks at your neck and your eyes, then pats you roughly on the shoulder.
The following few minutes are very strange. You stay still and watch things happen, but you don't quite feel as though you are there. Time speeds up and slows down at will, and you feel uncomfortable but not able to do anything about it. In this time Durand sheathes his sword and walks over to one of the large bushes by the lake's edge, at the top of the hill, where you first noticed the roses. Two young women are there, kneeling behind the branches. You immediately recognise the one who was screaming, because she is crying. She sounds just as afraid as she did before the men were dead, but now it's as if she has no energy to keep yelling. Your memory is very faint, but you know you have heard people crying before. Little children, and perhaps once a grown man. But crying has never sounded anything like this. This is more like moaning. It makes you extremely sad to hear it, and just a little bit angry.
As you begin to feel your body relax, Durand is with the women. They shy away from him and huddle together. The one who cries has soft, thin blonde locks, and the other one's hair is darker than the night sky. She looks at Durand with hard, dry, still eyes. They are both, you notice, very pretty. The word women seems wrong, now. These are young ladies. Probably too young to be married. Maidens.
The ones Talmir's men spoke of. The ones who had been kidnapped by bandits.
The maidens' clothes are torn badly, and they are dirty. They look thin and brusied about their legs and arms. Durand is speaking to them, very gently.
"Tania," says the black-haired lady. "And this is Evelyn."
When the crying girl hears her own name she starts shouting again. It is very hard for you to hear. Durand backs off a little, gives them time, and keeps talking to Tania. He asks questions, but not the ones you want to ask: just where they are from, how long they have been gone, how long since they ate, whether they can walk. Tania answers all of these in little more than a whisper, and Durand nods. Later he offers the maidens some wine from a skin gourd in his bag, and they drink a very small amount. With this, he stands up and returns to you.
He asks, "Are you all right?" and you feel a lot better.
"Yes," you say.
"You are brave," he replies, and he sounds like he means it.
The pale man strides away, a little bit further along the lake's bank, and beckons for you to follow. A few yards away, he finds a smooth patch of soil and sits down, and you do the same. Poor Evelyn is still crying, but it sounds more like sobbing now, and you think that's a good sign.
"I told you there would be danger," Durand says to you, looking at the maidens. "I did not tell you to run headfirst into it, but there you are. I was young once." He has the thinnest hint of a smile on his face.
"The men of Theronil village were coming to rescue them," you say.
"I know," Durand says. "I heard them talking, and decided to do the job first."
You don't know what to say to that. You don't know what to think of Durand. But you know he has saved these two ladies by slaying the men who took them. You know he saved you from the last one. His sword isn't shiny. But this man is a hero. You know that.
The bag comes out again and you watch him rummage through it. There are a few little tools: some flint, dry tinder and a small knife, an iron pot, mug and the incredible water thief. The rest is paper parcels of food, two of which he unwraps now. There is fresh bread from the inn, which he cuts neatly with the knife, and slices of dried, reddish, leathery ham. He hands you some of both and proffers the gourd of wine, but you only take the food. He ties the gourd and you eat.
Curiously, this unappetising-looking piece of meat tastes wonderful to you. The bread was quite stale, but you love it too. When Durand fetches some water from the lake, it tastes sweet. You wonder if the roses floating about it have lent it some flavour, but that doesn't quite seem right. Regardless, you drink quickly.
Durand takes the mug, fills it again and wanders over to speak with Tania. They are far enough away that you can't quite hear their conversation, but sometimes you can make-out a word or two from the maidens. Among these there are words that you don't understand, and Tania swears a lot. She seems angry at Durand, for reasons you can barely imagine. Evelyn has stopped crying and seems to be talking too, but to herself. She holds herself very tightly with her head down. They both have a little of the water, and Durand gives them that little nod of his again before coming back to you.
"They will be as well as they can be," he says.
You furrow your brow. "Of course," you say. "You saved them."
"They are free and alive," Durand says. He sounds sad, so you let it go.
In the corner of your eye you see Tania stand up. She stoops over to grab Evelyn's arms and drag her to her feet, and there is more swearing and crying. Very slowly, the two come to the riverbank and shuffle towards you. Evelyn meets your eyes and says nothing as they pass you, and soon you can only see their long, tattered hair and their legs.
"They are going home," Durand explains.
"Alone?"
"They have each other." He sees your face and adds, "They will make it back. There are no wolves, remember. And there is one more thing to do here."
He returns to the open bag. You hope he will retrieve more food, but in face he takes out a small mattock.
---
The one more thing Durand spoke of takes him hours to accomplish. You watch him stride further into the wild rose garden to find a flat spot, and you watch him dig. It takes incredible effort to accomplish this with only the small, thin hand axe, but eventually there are four long, shallow, dirty holes in the landscape.
"Graves?" you call over to him. You can't quite believe that all this hard work was to bury the bandits.
"Graves, child. They must be laid to rest. And this is the best we can do."
He kneels for a second, closes his eyes.
"You're mourning them?" you shout. You suddenly remember what it felt like to have that man's dagger at your neck. Your whole head is hot and you make a fist without knowing why.
"I am," says Durand. He's so calm, so resigned. It feels wrong to be angry at the man who saved you, but you can't help it.
The sky, surrounding the hill, is beginning to show colour. The sun is rising.
"But why?" You are on your feet now, marching over to him through the brambles. One of the thorns cuts through your clothes and nicks your leg.
"Why?" He is looking at you now, curious. Concerned.
"Why would you honour these men? They were evil!"
There is a look in his eyes, just the same as when you asked him about the water thief. He does not laugh at you this time, but the look is there. Stretching his tired arms, he drops the mattock. Finally, when you are close enough for him to talk without raising his voice, he speaks.
"What do you mean by evil?"
You wonder if perhaps he is not familiar with the word in your language, so you explain. "They kidnapped these women!"
"Yes. They were also murderers, I have no doubt. The worst kind of sin."
"Exactly!"
Durand wipes his mouth with his hand and breathes through his nose. He takes a moment before replying.
"And I killed them for it."
You just look at him.
"All men are evil," he says. "But these bodies belonged to children once. I have never met an evil child."
Your face is still hot. You're still making a fist. Whatever point Durand is making is lost on you, and it just makes you angrier.
"Have you?" he asks, and you shake your head without thinking much about it.
"Then mourn for those children who once lived."
You are not satisfied, but try as you might you can't think of anything to say to him. Instead you walk back to the bag, feeling a little pain from the cut in your leg all of a sudden. You slump onto the ground immediately, and lay back on your elbows. The sun is not visible yet, but the sky is bright and even a little warm. The strange man you followed here, who now has dry, brown blood on his loose clothes and skin, lays the four bandits down in their graves and begins throwing the soil on them. Before he is finished, you have fallen asleep.
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