The fire. The image burned itself into his brain, a stain like red wine on white carpet. The memory of primal screams as the throats of his victims filled with flame, their flesh boiling beneath the superheated mixture of sticky oil and grease. Dan couldn't help picture the chopped timber fuelling the camp fire in front of him as a pile of roasting, severed limbs, and the occasional pop and sizzle of moisture evaporating from the timber as the sound of eyeballs cooking in their sockets. He was morbid and absolutely silent for more than an hour.
“Are ye going to talk?” Alfonse asked.
A minute of silence passed.
“They were going to kill us,” Dan finally spoke.
“They were. You saw 'em,” Alfonse agreed. He started fiddling with a rucksack, pulling out bits of tinder, some bread, a small knife.
“You killed one of them. You shot him in the stomach,” Dan said listlessly. The usual strength in his voice was gone. He sounded ill. He sat still, eyes fixed on the crackling flames.
“Aye. Better me than him.”
“I killed three of them. I set them on fire. I've never killed anyone before. It's wrong,” Dan reassured himself. His voice was trembling. It didn't match his powerful build, his shaved head, his features that made him look threatening on a bad day.
Alfonse sighed, and stood up from the soggy ground. He walked a loop around the warming fire and added some more pieces of wood to it, wet with drew from the cold night, and it popped and sizzled as it caught flame. Dan thought of eyeballs again.
They sat in a small clearing of dirt and gravel surrounded by spruces, thick bushes and underbrush. The night was cold in contrast to the baking heat of the previous day, and the foliage provided only a small buffer from a chilling southerly wind. They'd been sitting in front of a camp fire for an hour now, backs to the wheels of Alfonse's trade cart, his horses enjoying their respite and eating from an open sack of grain and oats. They were completely out of sight from any other travelers.
“I know yer upset boy-o, but ye gotta know it was necessary. Ye saw them. They came for ye with axe and sword and hearts full o' fury. Had they caught us, we'd both be a pile of gore in the street,” Alfonse said.
Dan was quiet. Alfonse didn't push the point. He'd known it from the first day that the boy wasn't a killer. Someone who'd thrown punches at those who tested him, sure, but not someone who could look into the eyes of a dying man then sleep without nightmares. Alfonse had seen his share of combat. He'd seen his friends fall and die. He'd killed, accepted it, and moved on. He lived with it, yet he remembered how it felt when he was first touched by that ugly taint. He sympathised with Dan and knew all he could do to help was get him where he needed to go. Dealing with it was up to him.
“Why are you helping me?”
“Aye, boy-o. Yer still much a stranger to me. If I'd known when I come to collect my blade, that I'd find yer bloodied almost-corpse in a corner getting treated by Purvis, I would've just waited 'till the morning,”
“What happened?”
“You tell me. Purvis said Sergeant Errik beat yer face in 'cause ye beat him first, in an arm wrestle. Some CAF bigwig came along, saw it, and disciplined all the goons. I stood with him for a time, tryin' to figure out what to do with ye. You were out cold and no matter what you wouldn't wake up. Twitchin' like ye were havin' pleasant dreams,” Alfonse explained.
Dan vaguely remembered that much. He remembered the arm wrestle, remembered the beating, remembered a CAF official giving a verbal spray to the guards and sending them home. He'd tried to think of it while he was on the back of Alfonse's cart, fleeing through the city for dear life, but he couldn't recover the memory fully. Things were missing. He couldn't remember the CAF official at all, what he looked like, or why he'd come. He couldn't remember when it was he fell asleep.
He did remember something like a dream about the Old Horn Tavern where it was very empty and hospital grade clean.
Why can't I remember? Must be concussion.
“So, there we were, about to take ye back up to bed. Four o' Errik's men turned up. Said they were gonna make even. Over me dead body, said I! Ha! 'Twas a glorious little stand off. Purvis moved his fat arse like a crackin' whip, he did, picked ye up and slung ye in me cart while I rolled around with Errik's cronies,” Alfonse regaled. When the story came to fighting, his eyes twinkled and passion came to his voice.
“Stalled 'em all, I did, and took off in the cart to get ye out of there. They gave chase on horse back. Kept slappin' yer sleepy head silly, tryin' to wake ye up and get ye to help. Took a while. Must've slapped you at least a dozen times. Then... you know the rest,” Alfonse finished. He was holding unrolling a cured ham from its sack, tore off a piece and slapped it in Dan's open hand.
“Gotta eat, boy. Ye'll need the strength. I'll take ye to the next town over and there we say goodbyes,” Alfonse explained.
“Why would you go up against four men to save a stranger?”
“You would call someone like Rulgh, like Errik, a man? I wouldn't. They were men once but they became beasts, boy-o. Broken by the war, left with nothin' but lust to fight and dominate. The worst kinds of beasts. The one's with a position in power,” Alfonse disagreed.
They were terrible people. Dan went quiet again, busy chewing the meat, ignoring the ache of his swollen jaw and bloody lip. He didn't realise how incredibly hungry he was until he tasted food.
“Ye shouldn't feel bad. Ye should feel proud, boy-o. Ye burned some men who needed burnin'. 'Specially Rulgh. Glad ye scorched him. Remember when he spat on ye in the trade post?” Alfonse scoffed through the mouthfuls of ham, trying anything he could to snap Dan out of his depressive state.
Dan knew Rulgh's face. He didn't notice that distinct snub nose during the pursuit, but he remembered one of them having Rulgh's long armed, short legged shape about him. It was too dark to pick out those kinds of specific details. Dan's brain generated its own memory in the absence of a real one, a close up portrait, moving pictures of Rulgh's face, his pig's nose literally melting off his face. His face next, oozing down like candle wax leaving only a skull behind. The skull kept screaming without lips. The darkness in his mind just would not go away. Dan couldn't shake the thought.
Alfonse thought he'd help Dan with, and literally shake it out of him instead of figuratively. He was leaned over in front of Dan, expression blank with the waking dream of Rulgh. His leather gloved hands, braced with those dangerous arm bracers loaded with secret steel, were gripped tightly about Dan's shoulders. He shook him hard, trying to rattle the silliness from his head.
“Listen, boy-o! Ye got no time to sit an' mope! Other people are gonna wanna kill ye, too!”
Dan snapped out of it. “Why?”
“Yer the brother of Aaron James. I believe ye when ye say you don't know him nowadays, but other people won't care. Especially the Assembly, the Empire, the CAF. They'll take ye in and torture ye 'till ye give up information that ye just don't have. Then they'll kill ye. Might even turn ye into a bargain chip to get him to come out of hiding,” Alfonse explained, staring straight into Daniel's eyes, conviction in his voice, trying to get him to understand the danger he faced now.
“How the Hell do you know that?”
“I looked in yer pockets. There's a whole lot written about him on some paper ye got stuffed in there. I remember ye flashin' yer identification script at me. Two and two makes four,” Alfonse explained.
“Why were you looking in my pockets?”
“Thought you might have stolen something, dishonoured a bet and not paid yer coins, whatever. Something. Couldn't figure out another reason why Errik's goons would come back for yer blood,” Alfonse excused.
“There should be some coin ye won from Errik. Purvis gave it to me. Stuffed it in yer pockets too. Perhaps ye can use some of it to pay for me blade, eh? We'll figure out a price later,” he added.
Pockets. Front left pocket. A fleeting flash of a memory came back to him. Someone, that figure he couldn't quite make out, told him to look in his pockets for something. Something Dan was chasing after. His hand shot into his front left pocket and he felt the winnings from his test of strength against Errik jangling about a black silk purse. He dumped it upon the wet ground, uninterested -- "If ye don't want it, I'll take it from yer hands!" -- and dived back into his pockets to draw out an official looking document embossed with bold print. It looked a lot like an old 'spaghetti western' bounty.
WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE:
AARON JAMES
LIEUTENANT OF THE REBEL UPRISING
2000 COIN REWARD
Bart and Kerrigan honoured their promise. They'd retrieved the intelligence dossier on his brother, the most reliable way to help Dan track him down and warn him if he didn't already know of the imminent manhunt. He flicked through a short few pages, looking at maps, descriptions, associates, lists of accused crimes, and so on. Bart and Kerrigan held up their end of the deal. He remembered them standing with the rest of Errik's guards while a judgment was laid upon them. He remembered the clinking of armour dropping to the timber floor, and the men shambling away. Still, there was a blank space where memories of that man in power should be. It frustrated Dan horribly.
Bart and Kerrigan were in my room with me. We were planning something. Errik was going to sign something not knowing what it was. Get some guy down to the Old Horn from the Assembly or the C.A.F or something. I was supposed to rile up Errik and his goons, make them do something wrong. Whoever this guy was, the one that Bart and Kerrigan said could get rid of people from the military... must have been the same guy. The same one I'm supposed to remember, but I can't. Why? Why were Bart and Kerrigan judged as well? What did they do wrong? It was their own plan.
Dan ruffled his hands inside his pocket again and searched. He felt another envelope and pulled it out. It wasn't sealed, the lip open for anyone to put things in or take out. There was a scrunched up bit of parchment as if someone stuffed it in a hurry. Dan smoothed it out on his lap, and squinted to make sense of the scrawled print.
Dan read the letter two, three, four times. His headache returned at the effort of concentration. It was a lot to absorb through the fog in his head. Still, the note gave him some structure and order to the chain of events. The Chief Inspector was the man he couldn't remember. He had no idea what he looked like, sounded like, or what exactly it was which 'summoned' him. At least he could put a label on that blank space of his memory.Originally Posted by Bart
Some kind of sham paperwork, an order for the guards plan to tail someone undercover? The Chief Inspector was supposed to make sure it's done fairly.
Dan's pounding head just couldn't really put the pieces together. Perhaps later. It didn't matter, now. There was something more important in front of him. He had to make his way to Aaron, wherever he was, and tip him off. He examined the maps, locations, associates, and figured once he had some time to do it he'd hash out a plan. An itinerary.
His forgotten discussions with the Chief Inspector, whether it was a dream of things he subconsciously knew and his brain had fabricated the conversation, or it was a dream the Chief Inspector purposefully planted in Dan's head, or even if truly happened in the real world and Dan just was just too concussed to remember, had settled some things firmly into his subconscious. They floated to the surface now things were quiet.
It's time for me to pick sides. I have magic. It shouldn't be wasted. I can do good with it. I can make it up to Aaron. I can help him. I can keep being one of the good guys.
The ideas were like a bright torch on the dark, winding path he'd set himself upon. It was what he needed to see clearly. There would be more questions on the path, but it was only by walking it he could find answers.
“Get yer swollen head to sleep, boy. We're far enough outta Radasanth to be left alone but there's still a day's ride to Nelligin. I won't be rid o' ye soon enough,” Alfonse ordered.
Alfonse told more stories of the fight with Errik's men, bragged of his unbeatable skill and his great strength, flashing his hands about and wielding blades made of imagination just like the spirited elf on Dan's ocean voyage to Radasanth. He'd been talking to no one. As soon as Alfonse suggested it, Dan went back to sleep.
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