“What is it?” Dimitri asks. “Word from your sister so soon?”
“No, at least, I don’t think so. There’s no note.”
He does his best to shrug, though the three bags he’s carrying make the movement small. “So she didn’t have paper.”
“It’s unlike her to send her raven without a note. What if it didn’t find me? Or, better yet, what if it did but I have no clue what she wants me to do with it?”
The bird kicks its leg out of my hand, squawks in my face, and then leaps into the sky again.
I watch it as long as I’m able, neck craned, eyes squinting into the grey sky. It’s not leaving. It just keeps circling overhead like it’s following us.
Dimitri shoves me forward to keep me moving. “She probably just wanted you to take it to Nigh so that you two could keep in touch while you trained.”
I level him a flat stare. “They have their own ravens there.”
“Yeah, but you know how she is about her raven.” We both chuckle at that. “Or, who knows. I suppose it could just be some wild bird. Gods know animals have always acted strange around you.”
As our steady pace continues, I glance up toward the clouds less and less, and instead think about the new life I’m embarking on. I wonder what my parents would say if they were still here. Of course, my mother would call me foolish and likely busy herself with tidying up sections of the house that weren’t even in need of tidying, but that would just be her fear getting ahold of her. They had been proud of Tor for joining the Shadow Crusade, for defending the border of Arcathain. Buried deep beneath all that trepidation, surely, if my parents were still alive, they’d be proud of me too.
Of course, if they were, I wouldn’t be on the road with Dimitri. I would’ve been left in my less than fulfilling existence back in the Wallows, with only my mother’s and father’s trades to inherit, and a healthy dose of terror as the Blight swallowed everything we owned.
“I’m glad you decided to join me,” Dimitri says quietly, eyes cast forward. From this angle, I notice the fine stubble growing along his chin. It dawns on me that, the past few days, he didn’t leave my side once. He stayed nearby when I slept, was always with me for meals, and not once did he leave me to shave.
He wears relief the same way most wear pain. It’s like not even he can accept a good thing when he has it, but that’s just because he’s grown accustomed to losing everything good in his life. With relief comes hope, and with hope brings the possibility of disappointment, heartbreak.
He might be relieved that I’ve come with him, but we both know the peril that lies ahead. Neither of us are safe, but there is a small comfort in facing these dangers together.
To Cross the Shadowthorn
Countryside, Arcathain
Never have I walked so far in my life.
Even when my family and I would visit my father’s homeland on Drayfil Shore, or the one time we went to the Capital to witness Kalli’s swearing-in to the Senate, it wasn’t our legs that bore the burden of our journey. We rode on horseback, traveled by carriage and cart.
The Castle of Nigh is nowhere near as far as either of those places, and yet this journey feels like the longest I’ve ever been on. The endless snowscape makes it as such. Stinging pain burns through the soles of my feet with every step. My legs ache; the muscles in my back are so taut that I fear I might snap like a tree branch and collapse right here and now.
But one glance to the other initiates tells me that I am nowhere near as miserable as they are. For days now, we’ve been at this, and while my back is bare, the others lug their entire lives behind them.
“We’ll rest here to feed and water the horses. Be ready to move again in fifteen.”
The Crusader doesn’t have to tell us twice. The entire congregation of recruits practically collapses to the snow. They rub their throbbing limbs and aching backs. Some of them even start discarding their belongings, casting them aside in the snow and freeing themselves of the unnecessary weight of sentimental value.
Dimitri begins shoveling out half of his bag to get rid of items that I’m sure at one point he deemed essential to bring with him. Some of his tools, a few tunics and other garments, and even a handcrafted pair of leather shoes that his master had made him when he’d first taken him under his wing. They’re worn and tattered now, but the fact that’s he’s held onto them still, tells me just how much they mean to him.
I snatch them from the snow. “How could you part with such a thing?”
His response is a series of stiffly made motions and shakes of his head and shoulders. More than once he opens his mouth to respond, but nothing finds its way past his lips. It doesn’t need to. I already understand. Where we’re going, we have no need for sentimentality. A tattered pair of shoes isn’t going to protect us once we’re in the Shadowthorn, and no one’s going to mourn us when we die, and therefore no one will have need of our personal belongings anyway. They are simply dead weight at this point.
Maxwell’s chipper voice grates through the silence. “If you don’t want that anymore, can I have it?”
The recruit he’s hovering over, a disheveled man with a glint in his eyes, tosses the lump at him. “Have at it, kid.”
Maxwell fumbles with the artisanal thing, a small wooden totem just a little bigger than his uncoordinated hand. He finally manages to clasp it between his pinky and third finger. Judging from how the thing dangles from its long tail, the carving could be equine in nature, a mule or perhaps a stallion, but from this distance I can’t say for certain.
“I can’t believe you’d just get rid of this,” Maxwell says, tracing a finger over the smooth grain of the wood. “It’s not like it takes up much space, nor contributes to the weight on your back—and the craftmanship! I don’t know enough about wood to know the source it was made from but—”
“Birch,” the other recruit answers, his voice heavy.
Maxwell doesn’t seem to notice and keeps rambling instead. “It really is a fine piece of work. Look at the details of the horse’s eyes. If a painter took to this with their oils, I’d swear this creature was alive. Where did you get this? The master artisans are a dwindling breed. Art stems from creativity, and creativity is hard to muster when you’re facing fear every day, you know?”
“Maxwell, was it?” the man slurs, making me realize that the swigs he’s been taking from his buckskin canteen are likely full of ale, not water. “Do us all a favor and kindly shut the fuck up.”
Maxwell’s mouth clamps shut. An apologetic smile quirks up the side of his face and he shoves the totem into a rawhide pouch hanging from his side.
If I wasn’t so exhausted and numb to my core, and if I hadn’t been thinking the same thing, I might’ve stood up for the awkward young man. He didn’t seem the kind of person who handled such harshness very well. Then again, he was a recruit for the Shadow Crusade now. He’d have to learn to toughen up if he was going to survive the Shadowthorn, and me standing up for him would only make him soft, get him killed.
The Crusaders finish tending to General Alphonse’s horse and we move out again, my joints already stiff and frozen from the break. Before we leave, I notice someone has discarded an entire bag. I might not have many belongings of my own now, but once our training is complete, we’ll be sent to a border town and be charged with its defense; I may need a bag of my own for any items I might accrue between then and now.