The world had hardened since the south burnt, and these gentle little towns had been caught up in the wave. Some hit by bandits, some by famine, several by Crowkisser as she ranged out from the south to make sure her curse had stuck. He knew this because Hesper had traded blows with her for a while, running militia out to vulnerable towns and trying to train the farmers to scan the sky for crows and sharpen their blades.
Hesper, and his father, had lost their taste for that pretty quickly. Hesper fought best on the sea; on land, Crowkisser sent home one too many soldiers for morale to hold. He’d glimpsed one, once, hustled to the infirmary after delivering a report, clutching a hole in his arm the size of a fist, burnt clean to the marrow and stinking of lemon and rot.
So the little towns die, and the maps are slow to update. But they are still here, and night is still falling.
Quickfish takes Roof’s hand. ‘Come on, let’s find somewhere out of the wind, at least.’
They find more than that.
The death of the village unveils itself in a series of small sadnesses – the discarded weapons at what would have been the west gate; the bones that would have comprised a few second cousins and uncles, if the dogs hadn’t had their way with them, before they too died.
The whole town clustered around a well, which still ran clear, mercifully, fed by some natural spring deep below, sluicing away whatever petty murder had occurred up here.
Roofkeeper rinses his hands and scrubs his face.
‘This is fucking awful,’ he says. ‘What happened here?’ Quickfish hears him, but he’s already a little way from the well, climbing the steps of that pillared structure beyond. It’s a little familiar to him. Smaller, cruder, but familiar. Memories of holidays in the south with his mother, his Da off betting on horses or staking a fortune oncalcio. And in some sun-kissed plaza, a half-remembered temple, pillars like this, steps like these.
The gods liked their homes to conform to certain shapes.
He turns back to Roof, calls out over the blasted square. ‘I think there was a temple here.’
Roofkeeper picks his way across the rubble to join him.
‘A temple? Like, hosts, gods, the works?’
Quickfish shrugs. ‘Maybe? Certainly shaped like it. It might explain how they survived out here as long as they did.’ He scratches at his palm. ‘Might explain why they died.’
Roof spits, not one of his better habits. ‘I don’t want to sleep here, we should just keep going. Rest tomorrow. Don’t want to lay my head where the god-sick were splitting their skulls.’
Quickfish shakes his head. ‘Not … exactly how it worked, love. ’Sides, I’m done in. There’s enough of this place still standing that it’ll keep the weather off. A quick sleep, and back to it. Captain’s nap, that’s what my da used to call it.’
Roofkeeper eyes him sceptically. ‘Aye, aye Cap’n’. The loose corner of a smile makes it all worthwhile.
A short bit of work sees a lean-to and a fire, and some hides to keep off the cold. Quickfish tucks himself into an alcove, and eyes Roof across the flames. ‘One of your best features.’
Roof grins, long and easy, and pokes the fire with a stick. ‘My hair? My eyes?’
Quickfish shakes his head. ‘Nah. Your packing skills.’
Roof snorts. ‘You cosy over there, Captain?’
Quickfish laughs. ‘Not as cosy as I could be.’
The rest of the night passes like their nights usually do. The fire dips to embers, and the cold spike of the stars holds the night.
When Quickfish wakes, the air is clearer, the soft gold of morning slanting between the pillars and crumbled stone. He stands and stretches. Walking the night’s stiffness off, first around the edge of the temple grounds, where the hosts would have taken offerings, then stepping into the bowl of the temple, where they would have opened their minds to the sky.
All of it gone now, save for a few stark markers. It’s good for a brisk walk though, clears the head.
The crunch under his foot is less pleasant. Old stone, he thinks at first, a bit of flaked marble, but stone does not have the curve, or that symmetry. He kneels and digs a little. Ribs, and beneath that a spine, and then the rest.
‘What have you got there, Fish?’ he hears Roofkeeper call. He ignores him. There’s a glint amid the bones. And it should feel wrong, should feel morbid, but his hand is already in there, searching.
So when Roof reaches him, he’s already holding what killed the people of this town. The tip of a spear, flattened and leaf-shaped. Beautiful. He’s seen it before, of course, in his dreams, in the bodies of those unlucky scouts. There’s only one city on this whole continent that makes spears like that, thin enough to move the wind.
He turns it over in his hands, and for a moment, he can see it. The patrol coming from the north, wild and paranoid after the burning of the south. Best to stop the rot before it draws Crowkisser’s attention; take out the hosts and their gods with them.
And really, how much defence could this little town muster? Not with Thell’s young bucks already out for blood. All it takes is a loud voice in command. Maybe a panicked movement by one of the temple guards. Maybe a scream.
