The Night Maiden series #1: Riding a Black Horse

Chapter 5

In Minoru’s opinion, Olivet was a lot further than the three day’s hike Kamatari promised. His feet had worn through the rags on his feet and he could feel every pebble that had pierced his calloused soles, leaving them tender and bleeding. They had taken very few supplies with them, as they didn’t want to raise the suspicions of their families or demesne that they were leaving for an extended period. The Valley of Colors was very lovely, even in the dying light, but Minoru could barely enjoy it for the deafening growl of his empty stomach. At last, he could take no more and crouched on a nearby rock along the roadside, resting his cheek against his plowshare weapon and clenched fist.

“What are you doing?” Kamatari growled.

“I’m resting. My feet can’t take any more,” Minoru whined. “Besides, it’s getting dark. We should camp for the night.”

“We can’t camp here, you fool. We’d be just asking to get robbed by some party of bandits here with our asses sticking out in the road. Olivet’s just past this rise. It says so right here on this map.” Kamatari shook a rag with crude markings in front of his friend’s face. “What’s the sense in camping out here in the open when there’s food and shelter just a few hours march up there.”

Minoru looked up the road. The slope seemed even steeper than before. “But I’m hungry now and I can’t walk another hours. Can’t we stop here for just a little while and have something to eat?”

“You’re such a child. Can’t you tell it’s getting dark? In a few hours, it’ll be black as pitch and we won’t even be able to see our hands in front of us. We need to get to proper shelter before then,” Kamatari said. “Besides, I traded the last of our food for this map back at the last crossroads.”

“You did what?” Minoru gasped. His stomach gurgled painfully and he nearly tumbled to the ground in despair. “But how do you know that map is accurate? We could be days away from anywhere and be food for the vultures before anyone finds us.”

“Look,” Kamatari said, pointing to a spot on the rag and then towards the ridge. “That’s a spotted yarl tree. There’s a spotted yarl tree right over there, right where the map says it should.”

“But we’ve passed plenty of spotted yarl trees. How do you know that’s the right tree?”

“Because I can read a map, you illiterate buffoon.” He rolled the map up and stuffed it in his back pocket. His friend was unmoved by the jab. “You don’t think I’m hungry and tired as hell? If you want to stay here and hope, that’s fine with me, but I’m moving on.”

Minoru said nothing. He adjusted the rags on his bloody feet and sobbed.

“Come on, let’s go,” Kamatari said. “I didn’t mean to call you a buffoon.”

“No, I can’t go any further,” Minoru said. “It was a mistake to leave the demesne. At least I could have died at home with my family and been buried proper instead of being picked over by dogs in the road.”

“Come on. You’re not dead yet.”

“No,” Minoru said. “Leave me here.”

Kamatari spat in the dirt. “We’ve been together since we were spring rats in the gutter. And I’ve been kicking your ass ever since. So let’s go.”

Minoru shook his head. He laid down on the rock and let the ploughshare handle drop to the ground. Kamatari made a half-hearted kick at Minoru’s shin and missed cleanly, then grunted in defeat.

“Fine, like I said, stay here and mope. Your stomach won’t get any fuller just lying there and I’m not going to wait around to tuck you in for your little dirt nap. I’m moving on.”

“Then go.”

“I will,” Kamatari said, pouting. “Don’t think I won’t.”

He took several paces up the road, then turned impatiently. Minoru had not budged from his prone position on the rock, not even to see if his friend had left. Frustrated, Kamatari kicked at the dirt.

“You’ll come,” he shouted. “When the critter at night start to screech and the hunger eats at you until you can’t stand it. And when you do, don’t expect I’ll hold your place in line with the Dauphin’s men.”

“Go,” Minoru cried feebly over his shoulder.

Kamatari swallowed his anger, cast his friend one last look and then looked towards the ridge. “Fine, be that way, you sorry sack of dung. I can do this on my own.”

But even as he said the words, a pang of fear overcame him. He nearly turned and ran back to the rock but he put one foot in front of the other and then another and before long his legs were carrying him up and away from Minoru and past the spotted yarl tree he was no longer certain was the one on the map.

After a few hours, the dim glow of the sun sliding past the horizon gave way to longer and deeper shadows. The howls of some woodland predator could be heard menacingly in the distance. He had to feel with his feet to keep from stumbling off the narrow road. It suddenly seemed to be much too narrow to be the main road heading into Olivet. But pride kept him moving forward.

“Minnie will regret not sticking with me,” Kamatari grumbled to himself. “After all the times I put up with his endless whining, and he ditches me because his feet hurt.”

He heard a rumble in the distance that drowned out the whistling and moaning of nocturnal wildlife. It sounded like thunder to him, so he wondered if a stormfront was moving in. He could no longer see the clouds in the sky and while he could see a few stars winking above, this was not guarantee that weather wasn’t approaching. Kamatari stopped and tasted the wind. It was dry and sweet, not wet and salty as air before a storm usually seemed. Through his years as a farmer, he had become proficient enough in forecasting the weather that the other fiefs often came to him for advice on planting their crops.

“Hmmmph,” he said. “Just your imagination.”

So he continued on, but the rumble rose again, this time more distinct. It would crescendo and then faded to a dull roar, but the waves of sound tended to increase in volume the further Kamatari traveled down the road. He began to wonder if a large beast waited for him on the other side of the crest, and the thought made him weaken at the knees.

Kamatari slapped himself. “Now you’re thinking like Minnie, you idiot!”

He pushed himself against his own growling belly and fatigue. Twice he tripped or stumbled over a tree root or pothole, but finally he staggered to the top of the ridge. As soon as he could see to the other side, he fell over gasping.

When he looked up, he began to notice a glow. It framed the silhouette of a large skyline—several towers and perhaps a large keep mounted atop a palisades. Kamatari rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn’t dreaming or hallucinating. He couldn’t be sure, but he surmised that the noise was coming from the city. Perhaps they were having a late-night festival.

“I was right! I was right!” he cried, waving his arms frantically in the air. “I’m saved!”

Kamatari got to his feet and began to run on his shaky legs. He stumbled then tumbled and recovered, ignoring the gnashing of the stones against his knees and sting of briars against his elbows. The low rumble grew into thunderous crashing booms. Soon he could see lights flickering and make out the shapes of some roofs. The path itself grew lighter as he neared civilization and his heart filled with joy. He could now see moving shapes—people in uniform! It was probably a sentry unit sent to patrol the outskirts of the city.

“Hey! Over here!” Kamatari shouted in relief. He resumed waving his arms in the air to show that he was unarmed. He suddenly remembered the ploughshare strapped to his back but thought better of ditching it before they could see it was made into a weapon. He was just a simple farmer after all, and from afar he just looked like a simple peasant. He saw some helmeted heads turn by none of them moved towards him, so Kamatari continued walking and flagging them down. Two men nearest him were carrying torches and had their swords drawn. But beyond them Kamatari’s eyes were drawn to a crowd unlike the soldiers between them and him. They appeared to be dressed like peasants, like him, in plain woolen cloaks and pants.

“Hey!” he cried out again.

He heard muffled sounds from the crowd. He began to wonder why such a mixed group of people would be wandering outside the city walls at this time of night. If this was an armed patrol, why would they bring civilians? And if a group of revelers were out carousing, why would they come out here?

Before his weary brain could formulate an answer, there was another loud boom. The roof of one of the towers erupted in flame, lighting up the night sky like an enormous torch. Kamatari stopped dead in his tracks, bewildered at what he saw.

“The signal!” he thought he heard one of the peasants call out. Suddenly, a few of the peasants tossed off their cloaks revealing chain mail and swords. They lunged at the guards and several fell to the ground. The remaining guards seemed as Kamatari was. There was a general shouting among those still in peasant garb and some of them fell to the ground as well. A few looked up at the wall behind them to see a line of sharpshooters with crossbows firing down at them from the battlement.

“What in seven hells?” Kamatari exclaimed.

It was clear no one in the crowd had a ranged weapon to fire back. The men in chain mail and the peasants were dropping one after another as the sharpshooters picked them off. Then, the crowd began to run, like a herd away from the wall. To Kamatari’s shock and amazement, they were running towards him. As they approached in their panic, they took no notice of him but their bodies were so thick in the road that there was barely space between them. Kamatari’s brief joy had by this time turned to pure terror as he realize that he was about to be caught up in a wild human stampede. He looked to his left and right, but the road was walled in by thicket and bramble.

“No! Wait!” he cried out to the crowd in futility.

An arrow whizzed past his ear and stuck into the ground a few feet behind him.

“Don’t shoot at me! I’m on your side,” Kamatari said. “I mean I’m on somebody’s side. I’m Orloinian!”

But still the crowd stampeded towards him. He cursed under his breath, turned away from the wall and began to run the way he’d came. His shins still sore, he hobbled back up the hill, but the mob was faster. He could almost feel their panicked breathing on the back of his neck and the sensation spurred him on. It didn’t matter that the darkness was nearly blinding. His feet fell numbly but deftly over the loose cobble stones. At last, he felt the incline level off. He had reached the summit again. It was downhill from here. Maybe the crowd would lose interest soon. Maybe they’d stop running.

Kamatari’s mind went blank. In that moment, his skull crashed into something hard and metallic. A large object, blunt and stiff struck him full in the sternum, knocking the breath from his lungs. Before he knew it, he was prone on his back with the large object crushing on his chest. He clawed feebly at it to push it off him to no avail. The object screeched in pain.

“Minnie?” Kamatari gasped.

“Kamatari, is that you?” Minoru screeched. “Thank the gods, it’s you.”

“Get off me. I can’t breathe.”

But Minoru didn’t get a chance to roll off his friend when the sound of footfalls and screams came crashing all around them. They heard a dull thud, a gurgle and another crushing weight fell atop Kamatari, still pinned under Minoru’s weight. He could not believe his bony friend was so heavy.

“Minnie, get off me!” he croaked.

“I can’t. I’m stuck,” Minoru said. “I think someone else is here.”

“Yeah, there’s a whole hoard chasing me.”

“What’s happening? What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything. The world’s gone mad.”

“Olivet?”

“That’s where I came from. When I found it they were killing each other there,” Kamatari said, then cried out in pain as one of the crowd stepped on his wrist in their mad rush in the dark.

Minoru clamped his hand over his friend’s mouth to stifle the scream.

“They’re killing people? Why?” he whispered.

Kamatari shoved the hand from his mouth. Minoru’s hand and breath smelled as foul as fresh cattle dung and he probably hadn’t bathed in weeks. “How should I know? I just got here,” he rasped.

Kamatari gagged as some warm, sticky liquid dripped onto his face and lips. It tasted strangely metallic and salty. “Minnie, are you bleeding?” he whispered.

Minoru whimpered. “No, but I think someone else is.”

“Hold on.”

He reached his free hand around what he guessed was Minoru’s torso. It felt soft and round, yet firm—a woman’s breast. Mortified with embarrassment, he withdrew his hand in expectation that the woman on top of them might slap him for being so forward and rudely groping her. But no blow or cry of outrage came. He reached out for the woman’s neck. He felt around a stringy matte of hair and an ear. There was no movement from her. He felt for a pulse but he could find none. Then his hand brushed against something metallic and sharp, near where the woman’s eye or nose should be. It was mounted on a wooden shaft. Kamatari bit his lip to ward off the tide of dread that was washing over him.

“Oh gods, no.”

“What is it?” Minoru cried.

“Don’t panic,” Kamatari warned his friend.

“I’m not panicking.”

“You will, but don’t.”

“I won’t. Tell me.”

“There’s a dead body lying on top of us.”

Minoru whimpered. This time, it was Kamatari who was shoved a hand in his friend’s mouth to stifle him.

“Listen, whoever shot this woman at this distance could shoot us too. Shut up and lay still while I think of a way out of this.”

“Why would they kill a woman?”

“I told you, I don’t know.”

“How do you know she’s dead?” Minoru said, straining to look over his shoulder.

“I just fondled a dead woman’s boob. Don’t ask me how I know,” Kamatari growled.

They heard a few other members of the mob thud to the ground and a few more thin whistles as arrows streaked overhead. Kamatari listened as a few men moaned their dying breaths. After a while, the shouting dissipated and only the low thunder of the explosions from Olivet could be heard.

“I think the fighting has stopped. We should go,” Minoru said. “But where?”

“How in seven hells should I know. We won’t make it to the next city. We don’t have enough food and water to sneak off to the next city. And if the Fiorese are this far south, we might encounter the same welcome there,” Kamatari groaned. “Oh, hells. You were right. We were better off working the shit at that gods-forsaken demesne. We should never have left that mudpot.”

“Don’t blame yourself. It was a terrible mudpot and it would have been the death of us,” Minoru said. His lip trembled. “I guess it’s our lot in—”

Kamatari recovered his friend’s mouth with his hand, not because he wanted him to silence him, but because he heard a new sound—hoof beats and wheels against the stones. He heard new voices too.

“They tried to escape this way,” they heard one of the voices shout.

“We need to get out of here quick!” Kamatari whispered. “Help me get this woman off your back. Rock yourself to the left and I’ll push too.”

Minoru shifted his weight.

“No, my left, you idiot!”

“Sorry!”

With a groan, the two men rolled the woman off of them and then Minoru rolled off to the other side of him. “Oh,” he cried.

“Shhh,” Kamatari said. “What are whining about now? I’m the one who was almost crushed underneath your bony ass and a corpse.”

“I rolled onto something sharp,” Minoru said. “Hey, I think it’s a sword.”

“Some of the mob were carrying those. Be careful with that or you’ll hurt yourself.”

Kamatari scrambled to one side of the road and then the other. The bramble was still too thick to penetrate. “Give me that sword. Maybe we can cut through this so we can get off this bloody road.

Minoru moved towards his friend, banging him in the ribs with the hilt of the sword as he passed. Kamatari cried out in pain.

“Sorry, I slipped.”

Kamatari slid the ploughshare from his back and they both began furiously hacking at the underbrush. In a few moments the bramble had given way enough for them to force themselves into the hedge. Minoru pulled some of the cut branches over them just as the light of some torches reached the spot where they had been laying.

“I thought I saw movement over here,” one of the voices said.

“Nah, that bunch ain’t movin’,” another deeper voice said.

“That can’t be all of them,” the first voice said. “Where are the rest?”

“Stay on guard!” warned the deeper voice.

Kamatari spied the source of the first voice—a soldier holding a torch in one hand a pike in the other. He crouched momentarily and then flashed his torch from side to side. Minoru gasped as the firelight illuminated the mutilated hedge where he and his friend were hiding. Kamatari quickly clamped a hand over his partner’s mouth, stifling a whimper in the nick of time. Thankfully, a curtain of darkness obscured them as the solider turned towards his partner.

“Looks like the rest scampered off into the valley,” the soldier called. “Should we pursue.”

“Are you kidding? It’s black as pitch out there.”

“What if they warn others? The Master Chief will have our hides if the enemy comes back in force.”

“You willing to bet your life on that? We’re about likely to stumble across a pack wolves as those peasants. Without support, we’d be sitting ducks. I say let ‘em run. Let’s head back.”

“What do we tell the Master Chief?”

“We’ll tell him they’re all dead. Burn the bodies before they can do a headcount. No one will be the wiser. Come on.”

Kamatari heard the two soldiers tromp back towards Olivet. When he was certain they were alone, he pushed away the scratchy brambles and stepped back into the road.

“What are we going to do?” Minoru muttered from the hedge.

Kamatari looked towards the walls of Olivet and the faint glow of the burning city. The growl in his belly, which had subsided during the panic of the mob, flared up again. “Same as before. We’ll be making ourselves into soldiers. What choice do we have?” he said. “I’m just not sure whose army we’ll be fighting for.”

Next Chapter: Chapter6