Glass Winter | Chapter XXIII

Past bedrolls by the ice Sevt’s huskies pulled him, towards the low mountain that Eron’s weathered party had discovered. The scout himself was missing, and besides a murdered Holland so were the rest of his men.

“There are highlands sloping down to the shore,” Gar Darron said, “at least, that is what Eron told Sowne. And there is nowhere to trek but north.”

So north they went, all eight and forty survivors of the commune, where once there had been over a hundred, now strewn along the lake’s edge trying to catch some sleep. Sevt passed them on his sled with Gar Darron at his side.

Has the man got nothing better to do than shadow the new chief?

But Sevt understood the responsibility, as well as his own. These people were now his children as much he was a father to them; one wounded by war and the elements, who required a sword at his side in the form of a zealous Gar Darron. An overtly honourable fool, but a good man. He had been the one to apprehend Sowne and bring him to Sevt.

“Let us judge him for his crimes,” the scout said, “and when he is convicted, allow me to strike the killing blow.”

“I took you for an honourable man,” Sevt replied.

“I am.”

“But you wish death upon Sowne before he is trialled?”

“Both of us were present to witness his betrayal, the trial is only a legality. This man deserves to die, and he deserves to die slowly.”

Once most of the surviving denizens had fled the commune Sevt had finally been convinced by a group of able men to send in a search party for Sowne, and any remaining innocents. Bair had remained with the new chief during the alacritous mission, which successfully produced Sowne and three other murderers. After which, twelve survivors were recovered from the crumbling ruin that the commune had become. Gar Darron’s hands were still crusted with blood when he presented Sowne to Sevt.

“There was a moment, when the beast descended on us, that the concept of death paralysed you,” Sevt told him, “but now you wish to swing the sword?”

“He is no chief. His hubris has blinded him and cost the lives of over half our people…”

“Hubris…?” Sowne grew restless.

“…and I have spilled blood because of him. I do not wish to do this, but if I could lop the head off this augur of sin, then I may just wash all of our hands clean—”

Sowne would not have been himself to not fight back, striking a blow against Gar Darron and two other men before he was held down.

I cannot afford the resources necessary to watch over four killers while we trek north. And yet…

“As much as I yearn for justice too, killing Sowne is not an option, not until we reach the highlands.” Sevt declared.

Calculations twinkled in the eyes of the former chief at the highlands’ mention, and he would keep still in the discussion that followed.

Truthfully, I want him dead, just as well as you. And that is what justice will decide for him.

But more truthfully, death had only proven to be fuel for the darkness that hunted them. Soren and the other denizens him and Cara had infected were also nowhere to be found, and the beast their blood ritual had summoned could not be faced again, not in the state their people were in now.

“You and Sowne are all that remain of those who spoke with Eron regarding the location of the highlands, and with him gone you will lead us there.”

“There’s nothing to know,” Gar Darron claimed, “we follow the shoreline, wherever it goes. Do not provide this Sowne with another chance to kill.”

“This Sowne acted out of desperation. I do not believe that he will resort to slaughter with the bloodthirst now at an end. Besides, I do not wish to provide the Smiling Bastard with the mortal fodder he needs to murder the rest of us.”

“The ‘Smiling Bastard’, you keep saying that name…” muttered Sowne as he was lifted off the ground and carried away to be bound and gagged, “You realise that he’s not the only one? He’s only a servant…”

He’s only a servant.

The phrase sent a shudder through Sevt. To think that there were others like him, and worse…

It doesn’t bode well for what remains of us.

They lived like Quin and Sevt had, after the former rescued him and offered a ride to the hamlet. The commune’s braziers were now replaced with crude fires, burning the remains of the boats and animal fats they scavenged before departing. They would not sustain them for long, and neither would the fish oil their anglers now caught. Their only hope shimmered above the mountaintops, which disappeared into the low-hanging storm.

Malcolm. How did you save us?

Pastor Joel recited his prayers, though even he admitted their futility. Their former chief, the mad, equivocating recluse, was with his god, he claimed, whomever it was. A god that nobody in their commune could now deny was real.

And yet, dichotomy remained. ‘Pastor’ Joel believed in his pagan god, Aurora in her messianic lord, others in a deific law which bound all living creatures together in karmic action and consequence. Every man, woman, and child worried more about tomorrow than about reconciling differences in faith, and as the overseer Sevt was glad of this. They had all seen the truth, and the light in the lantern staff never burned brighter.

The huskies navigated towards a saddle between two peaks, where there was an ascendable natural pass. They were still obedient, mourning only when they went to rest, whining themselves to sleep. In the end, Medved had proven to be as bold as a bear.

Just as his name denoted.

Bair and some of his comrades had made the climb up the pass, clearing snow off the rocks and finding the securest footholds. It would not be enough for a sled, however, nor for a cripple.

“I need to see it.”

For myself.

Gar Darron looked astonished, responding something to the effect of how impossible the feat would be. Sevt would not listen. He waited for Bair to descend and meet him, as he had promised to do.

What do the dancing lights look like from up there? Are they even visible?

Did they even shine this far north?

Despite the preordained trial that was the purgatory they found themselves in, it all seemed like a cruel jape, and the prospect of finding nothing at all above the storm cloud disturbed Sevt, and robbed him of his sleep on an already uncomfortable terrain. The ground jutted through the snow in restive intervals; just when you thought you found an even surface and laid your head to rest, a stone would press against your back.

“And what about the others, chief?” Bair asked him after making it down the mountain.

He makes a fair point. How could I forget about the rest so readily?

“If you can produce a path for a cripple like me, you can certainly invite the survivors as well.” Sevt indicated to Gar Darron, “Help me up. And you, Bair, go get the others. We require as much hope as we can obtain for the journey ahead.”

However fraught and wavering it was. Some people refused to speak after the slaughter, others wandered in wakeful fits. Everyone slept and woke at the same time, with a handful of sentries alternating watch, the assignments of the commune behind them. The anglers took their minds off their troubles by fishing the lake now that camp was set up in the highlands, others prayed or sharpened their tools. No children played in the snow.

And Bair and Aurora would not mention what happened to Palina, with the scouts sent into the commune not finding a corpse.

Gar Darron cursed every few feet as he struggled up the pass with Sevt, a drop on their left and the icy mountain side on their right. The ground seemed to shift with every step, and neither Sevt’s staff nor his foot could remain steady or flat.

“I can watch over them, I know I can.” Olga stroked Aurora’s hair with one hand and hugged Wilbur with the other, “I know I can. I can watch over them.”

“Olga,” Sevt leaned forward, making sure that she was listening before he continued. “You do not have to. Your mind is not in the right place—”

“Your mind is not in the right place. Let me do this.”

“You’ve lost a husband, and like all of us witnessed horror that no man should see. Or a woman.”

“I didn’t just lose a husband. But the father of my child.” She pressed a hand on her belly.

Aurora looked up at the woman in wonder but chose to say nothing. Wilbur seemed distant.

“Allow me this duty, Sevt,” Olga told him, “I have nothing else left. Not for months.”

If we even have that.

The Smiling Bastard was after them. And he was after Aurora.

“That’s what Cara said,” she told him and Olga, “something about my pure soul.”

“It’s a blessing, honestly.” Muttered Wilbur.

Sevt had recognised him. It was hard to forget a child that attacked three men at once, one of whom was a pastor.

A self-proclaimed pastor, at least.

“Have you got something to say, young man?”

“Don’t call me that, sir. Respectfully.”

“Call me Sevt. I’m no sir.”

The boy still held his snow saw, never going about his day without it as far as Sevt was aware. Olga would soon convince him to lower his guard, though his prudence was commendable. None of them knew how safe they really were.

“It’s a blessing if she has a pure soul, being born in a place like this,” said Wilbur.

“So do you, Wil. How am I any different from you?” Aurora asked.

“Evil is an innate thing. I know that now, seeing what it turned Little Mal into, even at the end. Seeing what it made all those thugs do to the commune. There’s no guarantee that any of us is born evil or good, not until we have the chance to prove either or to redeem ourselves.”

He shuffled on the spot.

“Sorry. I seem to have adopted a little of Little Malcolm’s ‘wisdom’, as he called it. But it’s hard to see the world differently after realising these things.”

“Those ‘thugs’ were pushed to desperation.” Sevt told him.

Children shouldn’t be thinking about this. They’ve already been robbed of a normal childhood.

“No, it wasn’t that.” Wilbur shook his head, “I think there’s a good reason none of us remember our past lives, yeah? Our past mistakes. We get to see who every person really is. And when Little Malcolm thought that he encountered evil, he showed his true colours.”

After an hour, Gar Darron and Sevt reached the low-hanging storm cloud and sat down to rest. The wind picked up at this elevation, though it was nowhere near the tempest they had known since emerging from the ringwoodite sea.

How can Wilbur and Aurora return to a regular life when they’ve never known what it is?

Besides them only one living child remained, an even smaller girl than Aurora who could barely speak. Her father had died at the hamlet, Olga told him, and her mother now at the commune; an angler that could hardly spare a moment with her daughter when not providing for their people.

When the other denizens began to overtake them, Sevt and Gar Darron got back up on their feet and continued their ascent. The scout huffed in livid bursts.

“You can set me down, Gar Darron. I’ll take it from here.”

“Would you be able to?”

No. I would not.

What was a chief that could not support himself? Malcolm had been a prophet lost in his dreams, Sowne was a militant pragmatist. And now a cripple led what remained of their people. Everyone broken or cursed, and all forgotten. It made him question the purpose of carrying on, even if he knew the answer was for the sake of carrying on.

It’s questions like these that made Panuk and Quin go mad. I have no luxury of pondering them.

And as the fog melted away they crested the mountain, and all was silent and still. Half a dozen denizens were already present, gazing out at the sweeping expanse beneath them, and at the dancing lights overhead.

Silent curtains of green and blue, purple and pink, towered above them, shimmering in a magnificent display from each horizon towards the northwest, spanning across leagues of rugged, frozen tundra populated by groves of bowed black spruce cloaked in snow. And even above the lights, a thousand, thousand stars sparkled against a pitch-black sky.

Neither the scout nor the chief spoke a word, and nobody that gathered to join them, all whom the lights cast in its colours scintillating across the mountaintop.

“Well there’s our firewood.” Bair commented, observing the far-off forests.

“Blessed are the patient whom are low in spirit,” said Aurora, “for theirs the Earth shall be.”

It’s the brightest the both of them have been since we left the commune.

And it made him proud. Everyone was speaking to each other now, and while the pain and horror of their past was not forgotten, they finally had a chance to look to the future, no longer trapped in the dark. Furthermore, Sevt could not remember the last time the stump of his leg had suffered a throe.