The Death-Marked Pilgrim—Out Now

Chapter One

Read the first chapter of The Death-Marked Pilgrim in its entirety.

Cirdan murmured in his sleep again, words soft and quiet, pitched just beyond the reach of Halvar’s hearing. Though the sounds slurred together, indistinct, he gleaned their meaning nonetheless: the tall, broad-shouldered hunter was weathering another barrage of nightmares. Halvar’s heart wept with every muttered syllable.

The scene before him had grown familiar, the same subtle tragedy playing out, night over endless night. Brenna was the first to rise, waking silently and departing without a word, setting out to hunt in the cold mists of pre-dawn. Halvar would stoke the fire regardless of the weather outside, tiptoeing from log pile to fireplace as required, adding a fresh log to the blaze and stacking together any spare kindling in a pile beside the hearth. He would draw water from the cabin’s rain butt and set it to boil in the battered metal pot they used for all of their cooking, cleaning and water preparation. With luck, the boiled water would have cooled by the time Cirdan awoke, and Halvar could press a mug into the man’s grasping hands.

Some days, Cirdan would awake lucid, calm, even refreshed. He would lever himself to a seated position, stretching as he did, with his back propped up against the spruce panelling of the cabin’s rear wall. He would crack a joke, greet his friend, or simply sit in quiet beatitude and sip the freshly boiled water. On other days, he would be shaken from sleep by the wracked, fitful shudders of a body burning with fever, clutching the furs tightly around him, cold, desperately cold, but drenched in sweat nonetheless. He would be confused and frightened, incapable of voicing the terrors that had haunted his dreams for fear of conjuring them into reality. Some days, these conjurations happened without encouragement as fevered hallucinations slipped the shackles of sleep. Cirdan would rave and moan and weep until Halvar and Brenna, now returned from her hunt, could force a mouthful of cold willow bark tea into the man’s mouth and speak soft, firm words of reassurance.

Those reassurances were growing harder and harder to make as the days of fever and fear became more common. Cirdan was, it seemed, desperately ill.

“He sleeps still. Good. He seemed more restful during the night.”

The cabin door had creaked open a moment ago as Brenna slipped back into their single-roomed hideaway. She carried with her a large plastic bucket, ancient and weather-worn, stained green from years of immersion in silted riverbeds. The weight of the bucket pulled her to one side, and as she lowered it to the floor, the sound of sloshing water came from within.

“I feel like a fretful parent, grateful that he’s slept through the night without shouting or weeping.” Halvar drew closer to Brenna and lowered his voice further still. “He’s still talking in his sleep. I don’t think he’s healing. We should try to look at his shoulder again to see if the clotting has improved. If he’ll let us.”

“He’ll have to. He’d insist the same for either of us.”

Halvar stooped to pick up the bucket, and as he did, the fish contained within began to rail against captivity, thrashing the water around and drumming its tail into the bucket’s resonant plastic. Halvar hoisted the bucket to waist height and wrapped his arms around it, attempting to smother the noise as he moved towards the door, but it was too late. With a gasp, Cirdan sat bolt upright and launched into a coughing fit. Brenna moved to the hearth and poured a cupful of the now-cooled water, leaning across the pile of furs to hand it to Cirdan.

It took a long moment for Cirdan to process the gesture and reach for the cup, coughing and spluttering all the while. Finally, he wrapped both hands around the vessel and chugged it down, water spilling from his mouth as he did. A shaking hand offered the cup back to Brenna, and when he spoke, his voice was ragged and cracked.

“More. More, please.” He lifted an arm to his mouth and wiped the water from his beard. He coughed again, a great rattling wheeze, and for a moment seemed to struggle even to draw breath, panting as he spoke. “The heat... this place swelters. The door, please, Halvar. Let some air in here.”

“You were cold last night, so we heaped more furs upon you and stoked the fire this morning. Are you feeling any better?”

“Hard to tell. I can feel only heat. Like waking in the heart of a smithy.”

Brenna put a second cup of water in the man’s hands before crouching beside him and placing a palm upon his forehead. “The heat comes from within. You’re still fevered.”

“Aye, as though the cascade of sweat pouring from me wasn’t enough to confirm the matter.” He drained the second cup and let it fall into the pile of furs heaped upon his lap. “I can’t stand this a moment longer. Help me up, both of you, and let me go outside. I need a piss and a wash, in that order.” Cirdan laboured out from beneath the bedding, and without waiting for Brenna or Halvar to help, wobbled upright onto unsteady legs. The man glowed with fever, his complexion ruddy and glistening, the long side of his hair plastered against his forehead and cheek. He wore only loose trousers, dark with sweat, and a criss-cross of sodden bandages spanning his torso, cut from a spare tunic they’d salvaged from the ruins of Shelter. The other bandages, changed and washed daily, hung from a sapling outside, drying in the river’s breeze.

He staggered for the open door and leant his weight against the doorframe, looking out to the sheltered clearing beyond. “The air smells so fresh.” He gestured his head back into the cabin. “This place reeks of sweat and bile and bad dreams. I’m amazed you can stomach being in the same room.” He coughed again. “It seems I have the rank stench of death about me.”

“Not at all,” Halvar replied. “Just fever, just as you recover. The heat burns away the illness, sweats it out.”

Halvar put an arm around Cirdan’s shoulder, a gesture that felt altogether wrong, like a son comforting his father, the apprentice teaching the master. Cirdan transferred his weight to Halvar, and together they hobbled out into the clearing.

As intended, they had seen no living soul since their arrival at the abandoned hunting lodge a dozen days earlier. Indeed, Halvar suspected that there were only three people alive that knew its location, and all three were safely ensconced in the protective palisade offered by the willows and pines, spruce and beech that stood like sentinels around the clearing’s perimeter.

It was a short walk from the cabin to the river, where the small cove—and the huge motorised barge, stolen from the Priests—was hidden by the thick, heavy fronds of two ancient willows. It was here that Cirdan directed Halvar, stopping every twenty paces to catch his breath. Behind them, the sounds of food preparation rang out, the clattering of pans and the thud of knife upon chopping block, painting a picture in Halvar’s mind of Brenna scaling and preparing the fish, setting it to fry in the pan with a pinch of lard, perhaps even dipping into their store of potato cakes, thin flatbreads made from boiled potato bound with fat.

At the river’s edge, Cirdan half-collapsed into a seated position, dangled his feet in the water and threw his head back. His eyes were closed as he spoke. “It feels worse. It feels worse than the damned day it happened. It wakes me, every half a bell or sooner, without fail. It oozes and bleeds and burns, burns more than I could imagine.”

“Let me take a look.”

“Aye, I suppose you’ll have to. And help me wash, for that matter, like an invalid. In constant pain and robbed of my dignity to boot.”

Halvar began to unwrap the dressing, gently peeling the fabric away from the skin, blood and sweat sticking the cloth to the man’s torso. “I wasn’t aware you had any dignity to begin with.”

That earned a smirk from Cirdan, just visible as he stared out over the burbling waters. “These dreams,” the bearded hunter said, his voice almost as distant as his gaze, “they trouble me still. Dreams of Shelter.”

“I have nightmares too. The Priests. Searching the rubble. And that damned pyre.”

“That’s the thing, lad—they’re not nightmares. They’re dreams of warmth and safety. Of hot soups and cold spirit. Roasted meats and salted greens, and a table full of friends to share in them. A tapestry of love and warmth. And through it all, the constant thread that binds the tableau together—that sense of security that came from setting foot over the threshold of that place. That sense of belonging, when I’d never belonged before. I hadn’t realised how soft I’d become. How much I needed it.” He lowered his head and stared into the water.

At that moment, Halvar saw Cirdan in a way he never had before. The man’s single-minded drive for retribution had kept them alive in the days following Shelter’s destruction, but he now realised that Cirdan nurtured his resentment, kindled his rage from a smouldering ember into a roaring blaze, not for some brutish desire to instil suffering or right some brutal, unfair wrong—simply to keep the fire within himself alight, in any form.

“The time before Shelter was dark, in every possible sense of the word. There was more good within those stone walls than I realised.”

Halvar had stood unmoving, half-unwrapped bandage in hand, as Cirdan spoke. He now unravelled the last of material, save for the section stuck firmly to the bloody wound in the man’s shoulder. He leant closer and began to free the fabric, slowly but firmly. Cirdan grunted in pain as he did, digging the hand of his uninjured arm into the grass by his side.

Pain from the injury had nearly immobilised Cirdan’s upper body, limiting the movement of his arm and neck. “I have my suspicions, lad, but tell me—how does it look?”

The wound festered. After the first cleaning, all three of the hunters had been surprised by how small the injury seemed to be, a circular hole, barely the size of an acorn, plugged with a welt of congealed blood. Far too small, it seemed, for the impact that had knocked Cirdan from his feet. And now, the mark defied expectation yet again.

“It hasn’t healed yet,” Halvar said.

“From the little I can see, the skin around it is red. Fevered, it feels like.”

Cirdan was correct—half his torso glowed red, hot to the touch. The ugly, inflamed colour of the man’s skin was reason enough for alarm, but Halvar’s gaze lingered on the wound itself. A spiders’ web of dark crimson lines radiated outward from the wound, in places almost jet black. It was the colour of rot.

“I dislike the look in your eyes.”

“We’ll make a poultice.”

“I sense the time for a poultice has passed. How bad is it? Truly?”

Halvar spoke the words but heard them as though from another person’s mouth. “The worst I’ve seen.”

“Well,” Cirdan replied. He seemed to weigh his words a moment before knocking a clod of mud into the water with his good arm. The impact sent ripples splashing through the water, churning the silt beneath. “Let it never be said I dealt in half-measures.”
---

Cirdan sat the empty plate down onto the floor before him. He’d laboured over the meal, a modest portion of flaky, oily fishy and thin potato scones, for nearly twice as long as Brenna and Halvar had taken with their meals. He now glowed with sweat, a glossy sheen coating pallid skin. He seemed close to vomiting but hadn’t whispered a word of struggle or dissent—he’d simply soldiered through the meal in stoic, determined silence until the clang of the metal plate on the wooden floor rang like a chime of relief through the cabin.

Halvar sat crossed-legged on the floor opposite Cirdan, cushioned from the worn timbers of the cabin’s floor by his bedroll. It had seen better days—many of the seams had split, seen repair by Halvar’s amateur hand and dwindling stock of thread, and had begun to fray for a second time. The Priest’s book, an inscrutable treatise on the arcane topic of chemistry, sat open upon his lap. He thumbed delicately through the pages.

“You’re sure there’s nothing that might help in that book of yours? Nothing amidst its stock of recipes?” Brenna asked.

“As sure as I can be. As Kiara said—they aren’t recipes in the sense of the word we’re familiar with. Nothing in there like a healing cure, at least as far as I can tell.” He turned the page again. A sprawling web of six-sided shapes covered one half of the paper. It meant nothing to him, and his rudimentary understanding of the accompanying text did little to help decipher its meaning. “I wish my reading were better. I can usually make out most of the words and fill in the gaps through context. But this is like nothing I’ve seen before. I understand barely one word in every ten.”

“Even if there were some kind of miraculous potion or ointment or poultice within the pages of that cursed tome, I wouldn’t want it within a dozen spans of me,” Cirdan said. “We’ve evidence enough that the Priests are not healers.”

“You’d reject it? Even if the alternative meant death?” Brenna asked quietly.

“We’ve seen what comes of toying with the unnatural. I’d rather live by nature’s hand, or else die by it.”

For once, Halvar thought, Cirdan sounded unsure of himself.

Halvar turned the page again, scanning the book for the dozenth time since they’d arrived at the hunting lodge. On this page, he found hand-written notes, neatly injected into the page’s margin, and an extra sheaf of paper wedged into the spine. Despite the spidery script, these were more legible and seemed to function as a translation of the book’s contents. A bolded phrase—Halvar sounded it out, cal-ci-um car-bon-ate, without gleaning any meaning from the words he formed—had been circled by hand, and an arrow drawn across to the sheaf of paper. These notes used clearer language and seemed to form a simple set of instructions:

Lime. Shells, ideally oyster (snail, egg also possible) → 4:1 acid, dissolve. Neutralise, filter. Work into soil. Optimal ratio to be determined.

Halvar slammed the book in frustration. He’d never before encountered so many legible words that seemed to offer so little in the way of meaning.

“I need to clear my head.” He stood and stepped between Brenna and Cirdan to retrieve his surcoat from its peg on the cabin wall before setting out into the woods.

The evening had drawn in around them, and the rain was lashing down. The setting sun left the barest smudge of colour in the sky above the clearing, a dilute crimson already losing its battle with the muted palette of night. Instead of heading to the river bank, Halvar circled around the cabin and strode into the forest.

This was ancient woodland by any measure, a canvas of twisted, gnarled boughs jutting from an ocean of soft, pillowed moss. He saw none of the slender saplings and young, smothering growth that clung to the hillsides and valleys like mould—there was balance and stability and peace in this place, a measured ecosystem that had found equilibrium many seasons past.

He wondered idly whether the whole world would one day look like this, when the plant and animal life of these new forests had suffered through the long years of civil war required to achieve a stalemate. He turned to take in the tiny cabin behind him, just visible through the trees, and realised how fragile their imposition upon this ancient place really was.

His mind raced, drowning in questions that had no answer. Cirdan was his greatest fear: he knew, deep in his gut, that he was dying. They could not heal him here, in this place. But where else could they go? His ability to solve the problem was hampered by the incessant monologue that ran alongside his worry, like a network of treacherous, interlacing currents hidden deep beneath the clear, fast-flowing waters of his mind. Each time he tried to focus on the challenge at hand, he found his thoughts clouded by emotion, by fear and anger, and... loneliness. Stray from the centre of the river for the shortest moment, and you’d find yourself snatched by the current and dragged away forever. Lost.

Shelter was gone; they were three lonely hunters set adrift. The Green Priests would kill them on sight, and every settlement within a week’s travel was likely to play host to its own cohort of Priests and acolytes. The Priests had infiltrated everywhere, a parasitic creature that had wormed its way into civilisation’s beating heart with their gifts and promises. How long before they turned upon their hosts, destroyed them as they had Shelter?

No, this was all too much for Halvar to take. A lifetime of simple worries, his horizon never extending further than the next hunt, the next meal, the next chance flirtation. He wanted to laugh at the naivety of all that had come before in his life.

He bludgeoned the tree trunk with his first. The shock jarred his body as pain shot through the nerves of his hand. He hit it again, thudding into the wood, and again, and again, picking up momentum with every thundering blow, until the pain had blurred together into a single overwhelming tide, blotting out every worry and thought and fear.

He jumped when a hand touched his back. He turned.

Brenna stood before him, a shadow in the twilight. Her damp hair hung loosely around her shoulders, framing the pale skin of her face. The deep shadows of the forest accentuated her scar and unseated something inside of him. Love began to wash over him, pure, unspeakable, love for Brenna and Cirdan, and for Kiara and Carr, for his guildmates, for his friends and family. The tap had been turned, the bottle unstoppered.

Halvar lifted his arm to wipe the tears from his face, streaking blood across his cheek and chin as he did. “I can’t—” he began, but Brenna stopped him with a raised hand.

“Don’t. Not even for a moment. Don’t let it in. It will destroy you, and then it will destroy us.”

He lowered his head and choked back tears. Brenna’s bluntness and lack of empathy cut him, bathing him in shame at his outburst. She seemed to notice the change.

“We can’t afford it,” she continued. “We can’t let the grief in, not one of us. Despair will kill him, as sure as any rot.”

Halvar glanced up at her and saw her own emotions warring in her expression. That resolve, that fierce, unrelenting determination—but also sadness, her grief, raw and bloodied. She was right. She was right.

“Where can we take him?” Halvar managed at last.

“We have to travel to one of the settlements. He needs more than we can offer. He needs a healer, a true healer. It’s a risk, a huge one... but we’ve no other path left to us.”

“There’s only one place open to us, somewhere big enough and close enough to give us a chance. Cairn.”

An owl called from the canopy above, loud enough to punch through the rainfall and shatter the stillness of the night. A clarion call heralding the decision. Cairn. Halvar called to mind every thought and memory he had of the place. There were precious few—bar one. Cairn was a coastal town, and Halvar knew every stretch of river between here and the ocean. That was enough.

“I’ve been, as a child,” Brenna said. “I remember the smell of salt and seaweed, thick and cloying. And the sheen of cold, pitted rocks, all jumbled together at the water’s edge. But nothing else.”

“That’s more than I have. But I can get us there.”
---

They talked late into the evening, sheltered from the elements beneath the bough of the tree with the blood-stained bark. If there was a direct route between the hunting lodge and the shores of Cairn, Halvar didn’t know it, but he knew how to reach the coast. They would follow the river’s course as it grew wider and wider, turned from freshwater to salt, and eventually opened out into estuary. And there, nestled amidst tumbledown rocks and weathered cliffs, they would find Cairn, overlooking the ocean and the emptiness beyond.

He hoped.

They had little time to spare, so they decided to travel by barge. It was huge and cumbersome, and they would move loudly, attracting attention wherever attention could be found, but they had to take the chance. The barge could outrun a canoe on open water, and Cirdan could rest in the hold while they travelled.

It was darkest night by the time they returned to the cabin. Halvar felt relieved—their weeks of waiting had culminated at last in a clear, decisive course of action. They nudged the door open, carefully, quietly, with hearts already lifted. They hung their surcoats above the fire, found their separate bedrolls, and began to undress for bed. Halvar crept to the fireplace and filled a mug with boiled water. Stooping to place the drink next to the hunter’s bed, he found Cirdan unconscious.