Page 14 of The Blight of Hollowmire

The last time I rode through Hollowmire, my men disappeared by the fistful. One night by our campfires, we all watched in horror as the ground swallowed a man whole without ripple or sound. He simply… sank. Couldn’t be pulled out, or dug up. Plants and animals defy the laws of nature there, and so does time.

“And so you’re sending your men there?” I ask. “You would send those boys into Hollowmire to, what, entreat with the devious fae?”

“No, don’t be ridiculous. I would send you.”

The words slide between us and though I suspected something equally horrific from Arden, the panic that surfaces takes no note of my earlier suspicion. My hand curls reflexively, seeking a sword hilt that isn’t there.

“I laid that life down,” I say automatically. I swore to myself I would never again raise a sword against another man, if I could help it. At night I see too many of the dead in my dreams—I have no more room for any new haunts.

“You hung it on a wall,” he replies, his blue eyes darting to my sword hanging in Magnar’s stable. “Within reach.”

“What exactly are you asking?” I demand. Don’t ask me. Don’t say it. By the gods, don’t send me back to that life.

He doesn’t look away, but resumes his pacing, picking up random items and inspecting them—as if he has any idea what they are. Arden is many things, but farmer is far from the list.

“The old texts speak of her blood,” he says carefully. “The Blight Mother’s blood as solvent to any curses rooted in soil and stone. If she is slain and her blood spilled upon our lands, I believe the corruption will be undone.”

Slain. Spilled. I can’t help but scoff at his solution. As if we are discussing a lamb for a spring sacrifice and not a woman. Even if we are discussing some treacherous fae monster, the thought of yet more blood spilled turns my stomach and fills me with disgust.

“And you believe this?” I ask. “You believe some dusty old book about a monster no one has heard of?”

“What I believe has nothing to do with it. The fact of the matter is that we have run out of alternatives.”

There is something brittle beneath his unctuous manner now—fear. Real fear.

“You’re afraid,” I say, stating what’s become glaringly obvious.

“Of course I am afraid,” he snaps, eyes flashing before he reins himself in. “Only a fool would not be. Hollowmire doesn’t produce saints. It produces things that remember when men were prey.”

Suddenly, my spacious barn feels much, much smaller.

“And yet you would have me walk straight into it,” I scoff.

“You are the only knight who has entered its wretched heart and returned—more or less.”

Returned. Have I? Isn’t there some part of me—some raw-edged piece of me that was ripped off in that cursed bog? Some tendon of peace, some scrap of confidence, some fiber of sanity that sank beneath the green-brown waters, clutched helplessly in the gauntlets of my lost men? My body is here, my mind may never be—not in its entirety. Many things, I think, will never return.

Certainly not the half of my company who succumbed to the horrors of the Verge and beyond, nor the other half who remain locked inside their minds like a living death.

“You think I am unafraid?” I ask, my voice lower now.

“I think you are capable despite it,” he replies. “You are not an ordinary soldier, Renard. You are a champion of the realm. Hollowmire is dangerous, yes, but not insurmountable. You have faced worse.”

Have I?

The dreaded fae realm comes back to me in remembered scents and textures—the endlessness of the Verge and all its haunted whispers, the bogs thick with peat and stagnant water, fog that appeared to move against the wind, a forest that seemed to… know… things. Still, the one memory that rises to the surface more than all the others—the way my men trusted me absolutely.

The clouds finally crack open and rain rushes out in a deluge, slow and heavy, drumming against the roof.

I turn away from Arden, looking out through the open doors toward the river that marks my boundary. Beyond it lies Valehar, thinning by the day. In the other direction lies the Verge—wild nursery of monsters, and then stands Hollowmire, where the ravenous bog waits patiently and the earth thirsts for more than rain.

If I refuse, if I remain here at my farm tending the soil and offering meager handouts that do precious little to staunch the flow of misery, there’s no telling how long this curse will continue. If I go, I’m breaking my vow, picking up a sword I’ve never been able to let rust, damning myself with the possibility that I may unleash something worse. I am two wretched halves of a whole—hopeful farmer and battle-hardened knight. I am exile, and I am still bound by blood oaths. I am a man who feeds children, and a man who has soaked soil with blood and bile.

“You would kill her,” I say slowly. “A thing called by gods.”

“I would end this,” he replies.

“But how do you know it will work? You would gamble with the lives of all of Valehar. You would gamble with my life. You would gamble with the life of this fae woman and their gods. And what if doing this your way breaks something else?”