“The Last leaf shall fall,
Man blown like dust,
To ease the dream of a god,
Beyond the last wall of dusk—
Holding hands with Thunderer,
Dreamless, alone, a shade against deeper night...”
-Sunder Song
The memory of the fallen leaf, fallen last from the Oak Unbent, resting, frozen in Frigia’s timeless grasp on the simple plank beneath the body of Reverent Arbor as he flayed his frozen back—ever so delicately—haunted him like a dead speaker out of the haunts. The vision was soothing though. Recalling the icy bubble on its dried surface, he wondered.
“Reverent Chandler, I am comforted by visions of the last leaf that fell on the flaying plank. Why is this so?”
The old seer’s voice crackled in the icy morning, “It is your omen stone. It was a stray leaf from a lesser, unhallowed, tree, not a leaf from the Oak Unbent. It therefore—by blowing onto your plank of sacred toil—expressed the will of Farseer, naming you the carrier of the memory of the Nords, which is the Codex. You were so chosen beneath the Oak Unbent.”
Fend trekked outward from Broodhome, stopping to fit the pair of snowshoes that Est had dropped at the ruinous edge of their people’s sanctuary, Reverent Chandler on his back, rocking, and chanting deliriously the songs of their kind.
Three bow shots out of Broodhome they heard a cracking whoosh, and turned, there burned the Oak Unbent, a torch to light their way into the Nightlands above and beyond the ramp of snowpack, that wound up through the ruin spotted white of crag and crevice, the clutter of the Mud cities that had, in ages past, festered like puss-seeping sores in this vast land, before they were crushed under the tread of the Ice Giants, sent south, ever south, in Frigia’s wrath.
They stood and looked, and came the whistle of Est, the whistle of alert for danger. He looked east as Reverent Chandler looked west, and then the opposite way each of them gazed.
To the west, on the far side of the rumbling river on the push-piled ruin of the flattened mudcombs that once rose hear, stood a horde of Muds, not a Mudder among them. These were different looking foes, redder, thinner, armed with bows and arrows. They could not cross, but rather seemed to be there to prevent them from crossing. Some of their arrows fell to the ice-hardened ground a spear cast off, halfway between them and the river.
Reverent Chandler, whispered, “The Dust Muds, from the Dry Lands, enemies of the Sark Nords. We are the last, true and through.”
They heard an ominous creaking sound and a manly grunt of exertion, and then an arrow, a long iron-tipped arrow, shot out skyward above their heads, across the tumbling river, and transfixed a gape-mouthed head, who already seemed to wonder at finding himself dead.
To the East, on the far side of the cleared game land, just emerging from the stunted forest, whose trees had died or stopped growing in Fend’s youth, was a horde of Mudders and Muds, in equal number, tired looking as if from a long heroic trek, and lightly armed with spears, knives, light hand axes and bows and arrows of the small nimble kind.
Out ahead of this uncountable horde stepped a papa, in his black woman’s robes, holding his vile codex before him, and chanting some curse upon the Nords even as the ominous creaking of what seemed a tree limb behind them sounded, and gave way to the whistling flight of the arrow, that pinned that vile relic to the chest of he who read it. The arrow though, failed to kill the papa, who continued chanting his curses as the horde gave voice to a ragged hoarse roar and charged, of a mind to take them in a rush.
Est answered with a roar of his own as he loosed another arrow that none of the three stopped to view in its course, “Up the snowy way!”
Fend immediately obeyed and began running in long flat strides, making a slow rocking time of the ascent, convinced that he would be overhauled momentarily.
To Fend’s dismay Est passed him as if he were standing still, rolling up the snowy incline as quickly as a normal warrior might run up a needle-cushioned hillside in summer in trek stocking.
Reverent Chandler, who seemed to sense his every thought, counseled him, “Do not be troubled, Fend. Est once ran down a snow bear in his shoes. I know, for the shield maidens tattooed that act under Reverent Arbor’s left shoulder blade, behind the heart. Long and steady go your strides, in rhythm. I shall rock along and assist.”
His head slung low, his arms swinging forward and only back as far as the man slung to his back would permit, Fend ran his best snowshoe run, dismayed by the chopping song of the Mudder feet behind him. No man could outrun a Mudder, it had been said. And, as if in confirmation, not one of their rear guards had caught up with them over this moon long trek. They paced with the very dogs and could outrun every beast over a distance.
He surged upward in powder puffs of effort, the reverent on his back humming a wordless tune that helped him find his best rhythm.
But onward the feet came, chopping into the snow, sucking out of the snow, popping through the crusty snow pack again, and again, closing, nearing, soon to be searing his guts with hate-hot spear points.
His stride was at its maximum.
One slip and he was under their feet.
He felt helpless, unable to increase his speed.
The long, narrow Mudder legs behind him chopped into the snow faster, and faster, nearer and nearer, overtaking him with maddening ease.
The voice of Reverent Chandler came to him over his shoulder, “Do not fear. Do not stop. Do not turn, do n—”
The sound of an arrow sinking into Reverent Chandler’s back from behind, and felt through the buckling of the aged and agonized body on Fend’s back, steeled him to stronger effort, and he obeyed the man who had lived on his back for the past twenty-four days, who, once again, was only able to moan.
The remainder of Chapter 7, and the epilogue, Blood Song of the Nords, will be available as the conclusion of the completed novella, Reverent Chandler, in print by December, 2015.
