Wander West, in Shadow

Kells blew on his hands to warm them, hot breath a thin mist streaming into the air, the night chill enough to cut through his jacket and send him shivering. All about him, fresh snowfall seemed to quiet the noise of Twin Lamps, though it was not yet quite so late that the streets were abandoned - some townfolk tramped along streets illuminated by torchlight and oil lamp, here and there, through the freshly fallen snow.

The homes in this part of town were modest, single-story affairs, nothing like the manors with their extensive grounds in the rich part of town. The house he approached now was indistinguishable from the rest, timber-reinforced and white brick, a roof thickly blanketed with snow, though the inhabitant had thoughtfully shoveled out a path from the street approaching it. He glanced in the windows, and was glad to see the signs of a fire dancing within. Stamping his boots on the doorstep, he rapped at the door.

After a few moments, and the sounds of heavy bootsteps within, the door opened. Roark stood there, dressed not in his uniform but rather a plain, long woolen coat that reached nearly to the tips of his boots, a frown on his grizzled, scarred face. Others might think he was glaring, but Kells knew that this was simply how his captain looked most of the time. "Ah, Kells," Roark muttered. "What brings you by?"

"Oh, nothing," Kells replied lightly, shooting the captain a grin. "I just thought - well, you know - been a while since I had dinner with you, Cap'n. Wanted to come by and see how you were doing."

Roark sniffed, eyeing Kells. "I thought you might," he replied. "Well, come in. It's good you came by, since you and I needed to talk anyway, and I think you know what about."

Kells sighed as he stepped within the home. The interior was spartan, sparse - a plain, unpolished table carved from rough wood , and two similarly crude chairs, stood in the entrance room, and the small fire crackling in the fireplace did little to battle the night's cold. A small pot of bubbling stew sat above the fireplace, though it did not smell particularly appetizing. A shelf set into the wall held clay dishes and bowls and a few pieces of silverware. A door in the back wall led, he knew, to Roark's bedroom; a hatch in the floor down to a simple cellar dug into the earth. And by the fire, the one luxury the captain afforded himself - an armchair, upholstered in soft leather, stuffed with down.

As unadorned as the home was, Kells found it comforting. He had, after all, spent much of his time here in his youth.

Roark had been the guard who had found Kells as he stumbled down from the mountains after his father was killed. Kells' first few months in Twin Lamps had been spent wavering between life and death - illness, and the burnt arm he had suffered in the attack on his father's camp getting infected, had nearly driven the life from him. He had spent his recovery in this house, in a bed set up in the common room, though those days were a blur to him.

Once he had recovered, though, he had asked for an audience with the mayor - asked to be sent back home. He still remembered the fury he had felt when Bartuk had told him that he would gladly send Kells back to the White Queen - so long as she sent an escort for him. In the meantime, the roads were obviously simply too dangerous now - Bartuk had told him, with a clever little smile, that until the Queen could guarantee the safety of the roads, he would have to suspend the travel of merchants to her lands.

Kells had felt he was being held hostage by this little man, this traitor. And while he waited and waited, no escort ever arrived to bring him home - not even after winter had given way to spring, and the mountain paths should have been easier to travel. He had hated Twin Lamps, at first. Though Roark provided for him, the captain honestly barely ever spoke to him in the beginning. And the other children his age in town gawked at his strange looks and pale skin, and mocked him mercilessly when he claimed to be noble-born. The people of Twin Lamps might be loyal to the Queen, but they had no true nobility of their own, and a child claiming noble blood with nothing to back it up earned little more than scorn. He wrote letters back to court - while Bartuk did not allow merchants to travel to the Queen's lands, the town hall still delivered letters by bird - begging to be rescued, but no response ever came. He wrote too, to his friend, the princess, and was miserable beyond words when he never heard from her either.

He had spent a little more than a year in Twin Lamps, miserable, lashing out at the town and hated by the other children his age, when the horrible news had come. Merchants traveling from the east brought word that the Queen and her family had been killed. The war was over, and she was gone. None of them seemed clear on how it had happened - some said that the Queen had been killed in battle, others said that her castle had been sieged and sacked, and others still said that her own people had risen up against her.

Kells had not wanted to believe it at first, not wanting to believe that his princess was dead. When the other children had found him crying, and mocked him for it, Kells had gone into a frenzy, beating five of them bloody and senseless, though they outnumbered him, so mad with grief that the guard had to give him a beating to make him stop. That day, when he came back to Roark's house, battered, bloody and sobbing, Roark had sat him down. The grizzled old soldier had told him that the hard truth was, whatever his life had been before, it was gone now. He could choose to grow up, miserable and clinging to the past - or, Roark said, he could choose to do what he was clearly good at - fight. Roark would gladly train the boy so that he might join the guard.

Kells had not wanted to listen, at first. He had told Roark he wanted to go home, no matter what it was like now, no matter how burned, conquered and ruined. But the paths over the mountain ranges truly had become dangerous now - neither the guard nor travelers never returned from them, and to go around the ranges was a very long journey indeed. But Roark, surprisingly gentle, said that he would take the boy himself one day, should he still wish it, when the paths became safe once more - or even take the longer journey with him, if Kells could raise the coin for it.

With nothing else to do, Kells had thrown himself into training, long lessons with Roark at least taking his mind off his misery. And as the years passed, and he eventually joined the guard, and began to serve Twin Lamps...he found that his memories, all that had seemed important to him in his youth, began to fade. People in the town liked him now; he had comrades among the soldiers. And Roark - though he could have a temper, and be stern, Roark was also kind and fatherly to him. As each year passed, his former life seemed further and further away, and the prospect of traveling back home held less and less appeal. What would he ever find there anyway, except the ashes of dreams he had once had, and the long-cold corpses of childhood friends? By the time he was an adult, he had realized - better to simply let things go. He was happy here. It was what it was.

"Kells!" Roark snapped, snapping him out of his memory. "I said grab some bowls, boy! Get the stuffing out of your ears!"

Kells gave a start; he had been standing just a few paces from the doorway, the snow from his boots melting into the hard wooden floor. He scurried to the shelf, grabbing two clay bowls and wooden spoons to go with them. Roark bustled around the table, setting out a hunk of stale bread; he took the bowls and dipped them into the pot of hot stew by the fire, hissing as it burned his fingers. Kells nearly laughed - he would have told Roark to use a ladle, but the captain refused to have anything but the most bare necessities of dishware. It was why it had been such a shock to see that the captain had gone through the effort of making Elyse cookies as an apology - he must have truly gotten creative with cooking those. It was too bad the captain had never married - Roark could have surely used a wife.

They both sat at the table, blowing at the stew to cool it - some haphazard brown sludge of unspiced, overcooked vegetables and beef. Kells frowned at this, prodding it with a crust of bread. "You got too used to fancy tavern food lately, eating with our witch and wizard," Roark said, watching him. "At least here you don't have to spend the coin."

"Not at all. I missed this, in fact. Your slop has its...charms. I would say it's almost as good as barracks food."

Roark snorted, dipping a hunk of his bread into the stew. "You can't fool me, boy. I know why you eat with me tonight. You must be half-mad, to get in a fight with a wizard."

"Ah." Kells tapped his fingers nervously along the edge of the table. "Heard about that, did you."

"You must be completely mad if you think Madame Ro would not report someone who started a fight with one of her guests to the guard," Roark replied sardonically. His sharp, dark eyes glanced up across the table at Kells, silver hair glinting in the firelight. "Been a while since you got in a fight like that. I thought you liked those two."

"I did," Kells sighed, stirring his stew idly, watching the steam rise from it. "That is, I do. It's just, well, the issue of my father came up..."

Roark sat, listening, slurping at his stew, as Kells told the tale. How Martimeos was looking for his brother, who, as it turned out, could very well be the man who had killed Kells' father. How cold Martimeos had been, afterward, saying his father had deserved it. Roark let out a low whislte when Kells had finished. "Well," he said, "At least now we know why the wizard traveled here. Still, I had not thought you would want to take revenge on him for what his brother had done."

"It wasn't revenge," Kells protested. "I...hadn't even thought about it in years. I cannot even really say I blame him for his thinking; he said that there was a Queen's Knight who burnt down his home and nearly killed him as a child..."

Roark nodded grimly. "I think you have heard enough tales from travelers to know that the Queen's forces did not always treat the people of this land very well."

"I know, I know. I regret it. 'Tis just...I was drunk, and Martimeos did not seem to care how brutally his brother went about it, and...it was my father." Kells smiled weakly, shrugging. "I don't know."

Roark stared quietly at Kells for some time, the only sound the fire crackling in the fireplace and the wind howling outside. Finally, he set his spoon down in his bowl, sighing. "You know, boy," he said quietly, "I am an old soldier."

"Old? No. You're a regular spring chicken, Cap'n."

"Shut up," Roark growled. "I am trying to give you some wisdom. Now, as I was saying..." He kicked back, crossing his arms, staring steadily across the table at Kells. "I am an old soldier. I've been out on patrols for Twin Lamps since before you were born. And as bad as this rider right now is...I can't say he's the scariest thing I've had to witness."

Kells' eyes widened. "I'm having a hard time believing that. These lands have seen something worse than a man whose victims come back to life?"

"No, not quite." Roark stared up at the ceiling. "It was a long time ago. These lands used to have a much worse bandit problem. There was one young guardsman - soft spoken, sweet lad, came from the farmfolk. Thought he was too soft for the guard. Well, the bandits attacked his farm, killed his parents, rode off with his sisters. Well, one time, he's out on patrol, and they don't report back on time. I was sergeant at the time, so I'm sent out with a patrol of my own to find him. Well, I do find him. He's captured a pair of bandits. That was probably the scariest thing I ever saw."

"What was so scary about that?" Kells asked softly.

"He was torturing them," Roark replied, his voice grim. "Asking them where his sisters were. Torturing them so badly all they could do was gurgle in reply." Roark lowered his eyes to stare once more at Kells. When the boy did not respond, he continued. "Now this was scary for two reasons. First, there was a part of me that wanted to say...they deserved it. Not even so that he could get an answer about his sisters; they just deserved it for what they had done. But beyond that...it was frightening because after I pulled him away, him crying, sobbing...I realized that he was still that same soft, sweet lad. It was the first time I really understood something that's been with me my whole life since."

Kells waited for a moment, but all Roark did was nod quietly. "And what's that?" he prodded.

"Life is as cheap as you treat it." Roark looked down at his hands as he spoke, dirty fingernails and palms calloused from holding weapons. "And the more you see it treated cheaply, the more you start to see it that way yourself. Good people, kind people, can torture, be merciless and brutal, if they see their loved ones taken from them on the whims of fate." He paused for a moment, looking at Kells, dark eyes glimmering in the firelight. "'Tis something I worry about for you, lad."

Kells did not respond for a long time. "So...what is your point?" he said finally. "I don't....blame Martimeos, but...am I to just say that he has the right of it? My father deserved to die, no matter how he begged?"

"No." Roark shrugged. "Just to think that it does not mean he is as bad as his callousness makes him seem. Think of what he might have lost that made him speak so. And remember yourself that how you might feel about your father is not the whole of the world's suffering."

They finished their stew in silence, wooden spoons knocking softly against clay bowls. The bread was stale, and Kells was pretty sure it was moldy, but at least the meal was filling.

Roark sat in his armchair after dinner, and Kells pulled up one of the rough wooden chairs to join him by the fire, the captain puffing away at his carved boar-head pipe. They talked a bit of how the patrols in the farmlands were going - by now, most of the farmers had come into town, and those few who hadn't were either dead or lunatics. They still found headless bodies roaming the farmlands, and occasionally heard the cry of the rider's horse, but they had lost no patrols to it ever since they had been made larger. "My hope is when he realizes he can find no more easy prey, he moves on before spring," Roark muttered, blowing smoke out his nose, as he stared into the fire. "Though we may need more guard in the streets of the town itself. Farmfolk starting fights, but who can blame them? Half of them are living in tents out in the snow."

"You really think the rider would just leave?" Kells asked. He busied himself with whittling down a piece of firewood with a dagger plucked from his boot, tossing the shavings into the fireplace.

"I was hoping our wizard and witch might be able to give us more advice on that," Roark snorted. "But my friendly source with them had to go and beat the wizard's teeth in."

"I'll apologize," Kells sighed. "Even if he won't speak to me anymore, perhaps Elyse still will."

"I hope I don't have to tell you not to fall for a witch just because she has a pretty face and shows off her leg."

"Nothing wrong with a witch," Kells said idly. At Roark's sharp glance, he laughed, putting up his hands. "Don't worry. Besides, I think there is something a little funny going on with her and Martimeos, though he denies it. The wizard sang a few nights back, and she looked as if she wanted to drag him off to bed right then and there. Perhaps she did, for all I know."

"Good," Roark grumbled. "Plenty of women will give you trouble without being a witch besides."

"Good advice, Cap'n. If I listen to you a bit more about the fairer sex, perhaps I can have a love life as successful as yours."

"Having some peace and quiet is pretty damn successful if you ask me." Suddenly, Roark sighed, wincing and putting a hand to his head, his face drawn.

Kells took a good look at him, and noticed for the first time the dark bags beneath his eyes. "You alright? Not coming down with something, are you?"

"No," Roark muttered, "Just been having trouble sleeping these past few nights. At least tomorrow I have a break from patrols. Perhaps I can get some rest tonight."

"You know what always helps me sleep?" Kells grinned. "Some wine."

Roark rolled his eyes, settling into his chair, kicking his legs out straight so that his feet warmed nearer to the fireplace. "I'm sure you bring that up for my benefit, boy. But why not, I could go for a drink. Fetch a bottle from the cellar for us to share."

Kells leapt up from his chair, leaving Roark relaxing by the fireplace, and went to the wooden hatch in the floor. Pulling the iron ring bolted to it, he lifted it up with a groaning creak, revealing a pit of yawning darkness, only the first few steps of a rickety ladder visible at the top before it disappeared into the dark below.

Kells did not bother with a candle; he was familiar enough with the cellar to feel his way around in the dark, and besides, it was small. He descended down the ladder quickly, careful as it shook beneath his weight. At the bottom, he reached out with his hands, until they met the cool, smooth earth of the cellar walls, and cautiously moved forward.

He may have been familiar with the cellar, but for some reason, as he moved blind in the darkness, a strange nervous fear took him. The fear of the dark he had had as a young child, that dread he would feel lying in bed as the world was nothing but shadow around him. He bit his lip, glancing back, upwards, towards the hatch, where the firelight still danced, wondering if he ought to bring a candle after all. But he chided himself as a fool, and continued moving forward, one hand on the wall, the other outstretched before him.

It was not long before his hand bumped into the rough wood of a shelf. Groping blindly, carefully, he felt his fingers brush across the dusty surface of smooth glass bottles. Grabbing one, he shook it, smiling to himself as he heard the contents slosh within. He was considering whether or not he should take two bottles when he heard an odd knock from somewhere above him.

He paused, glancing back towards the hatch. "Cap'n?" he called, but there was no answer.

Gripping the bottle in one hand, he made his way back towards the ladder, the bottle clinking against the wooden rungs as he climbed back up. He knocked the hatch back closed with a boot as he stood, wincing as it slammed shut with a loud bang. Glancing towards the fireplace, he could see it looked as if the chair he had been sitting in was knocked over. "Cap'n?" he called again, but more softly this time. He could see Roark's hand gripping the arm of the upholstered chair he sat in, but it did not move at his call. Perhaps the captain had nodded off. He moved forward quietly, not wanting to wake him, to peer around the front of the armchair.

Roark had no head.

Kells blinked, not understanding what he was seeing for a moment. He watched the blood seeping into the top of Roark's long woolen coat, a tiny rivulet running down one of the metal buttons. Then the wine bottle dropped from his hands, shattering against the floor, sloshing wine across the front of his boots, as he shouted in horror.

The part of him that was a soldier took control, dulling his shock; it told him quickly to stop staring at the corpse, told him to pay attention, that whoever had done this may still be here. Kells dragged his eyes from Roark, feeling strangely as if he was floating, that none of this was real, as he cast his eyes about the room.

And there - in a corner of the room that the fire's light did not touch - almost looking as if it were part of the shadow itself - stood the rider. Yellow eyes burning like pale fire in the darkness, cattle-skull teeth grinding and chittering. Beneath one arm it held Roark's head, his captain looking for all the world like he actually was sleeping.

Kells couldn't move, as the thing simply stared at him. His heart seized with terror so strong it felt as if it were a block of ice. The rider was almost hard to look at - like the edges of it hummed and blurred, bleeding into the shadow it stood in.

And then, wordlessly, it moved. Slow, heavy bootsteps creaked across the wooden floor as it turned away from him, inky black cloak dragging behind it, the tips of its long, curving horns nearly scraping across the ceiling. It opened the door to Roark's bedroom, ducking to enter inside, and then closed the door behind it.

As soon as it was out of sight, Kells felt the anger, the outrage, surge through him, like his blood had turned to fire, boiling away the haze of fear and dread that had kept him rooted. That rider - that thing - it had killed Roark. Roark was dead.

The soldier side of him told him not to be a fool, but it burned to ashes in the heat of his rage. With a howl of fury, he snatched up one of the chairs, holding it in both hands before him as a weapon; he dashed forward, his boots crunching in the broken glass of the wine bottle, kicking open the door to Roark's bedroom, and-

It was empty.

Roark's bedroom had no windows; only a small, square bed with perfectly smooth sheets, and a bedside table that carried a lit candle to provide light. Nothing but bare brick walls greeted him. With a mighty kick, he sent the bed itself toppling, but nothing was beneath it. The rider had entered the room and then vanished into thin air.

Kells placed the chair down on the floor before him, leaning against it with both hands, closing his eyes, biting his lip until he tasted blood. His mind was a howling storm of rage and fear, no room even for sorrow; the first time he had felt this way since childhood. He tried to quiet it, tried to find the calm that had given him peace, that he had grown to find since he came to Twin Lamps, but right now, it would not come.

"Who's there?" a voice came from behind him. Roark's voice. Sounding as if it were echoing through a long, winding tunnel.

Kells slowly turned around.

Roark's headless corpse stood in the doorway to his bedroom, staggering forward. In the darkness, Kells could see a dim blue glow occupying the space where his head ought to be, a fuzzy, faint cloud. "Kells? Is that you, boy? Hurry up with that wine. What happened to the fire? I can't see a thing. Damn splitting headache."

Kells stepped back, his mind reeling, nearly knocking over the chair.

At the sound of wood scraping on wood, Roark's corpse stiffened, then turned towards where Kells stood. "I hear you, intruder," his voice snarled from the empty space where his head should have been. "You'll be sorry you tangled with me." Rough, calloused hands reached out towards Kells, as the corpse stumbled towards him.

"No," Kells whispered. "It's me, Cap'n. It's Kells." But Roark gave no sign he had heard him. He simply continued lurching forward, his hands almost at Kells' throat.

Kells brought the chair up and slammed it down against Roark. Again, and again, and again. It shattered in his hands. He continued striking with one of the chair legs, frantically, furiously, bones cracking beneath his blows, until the rough length of wood was slick with blood, not stopping until finally, mercifully, Roark's corpse had stopped moving, stopped speaking.

Kells let the chair leg drop, clattering against the floor. He stared at his bloodstained hands, In a daze, he stepped over the mangled remains of Roark, leaving the bedroom. He felt oddly calm. Almost as if he floated, as if his body was not really his. He passed the table, noting with interest the dirty bowls still lying upon it. Someone really ought to clean that up, he thought.

He left Roark's house, closing the door quietly behind him. The sudden chill of the night air threatened to bring him back to reality, but he soon became numb to that too. He sat on Roark's doorstep, drawing his knees up before him, looking up toward the moon, hanging peacefully in the night sky, nestled amongst the stars, its soft light illuminating the snow blanketing Twin Lamps in an eerily beautiful glow.

And that was how the guard found him, blood-spattered and staring into the night sky.