A Block in the Fire

            Lisenrush had killed a wild snow deer. They had been lucky to come across one. Even as far out as Far Watch, the wild animals had mostly moved away to avoid the noisy and dangerous humans. Lisenrush skinned the animal with her combat knife and the two of them worked together to turn the grey hide with its white spots into makeshift shoes. They were not, by any stretch of the imagination, built to last, but it meant that the ground would not freeze Ana’s toes off. The rest of the hide Lisenrush turned into thick cloaks. Ana was grateful for the warmth, even if the hide began to smell a bit after the first day.

            Far Watch was a day’s drive with a proper vehicle, and if one was willing to use the roads, but Lisenrush insisted that they stay in the forest.

            “We don’t know if they’ll be looking for us,” she said.

            Ana was pretty certain that the faceless men would be able to follow them on the road or through the forest with equal ease, but Lisenrush insisted, and Ana was not willing to stray too far from the Ranger-Captain.

            There was still a lot of snow in the forest, and the trees were only just barely beginning to recover their foliage. The entire forest seemed muted, and even the sounds that she and Lisenrush were making seemed to whisper.

            Her feet squished in the make-shift moccasins. Lisenrush had done her best to scrape the fat from the hide, but it had not been a perfect job. Ultimately, Ana consoled herself by noting that the fat would help insulate her feet.

            Ana had heard about the wilderness training that the rangers went through, but she was still impressed with Lisenrush’s comfort in the woods. Ana considered herself a city girl, even if Port O’James was a little too small to be considered a true city. She had never spent much time in the wild, unless one counted the sea, though she had not gone out on boats much since her brother died.

            Therefore, for the time being, Ana felt utterly useless. She could handle herself on the streets – even in the dangerous Darkmoor district near the southern docks – but she had nearly scared the snow deer away when Lisenrush first saw it, and she doubted she would have even seen the beast if it had not been for Lisenrush, who had pointed it out to her.

            Ana sniffed the air. There was a sharp bite in it that she realized, after about five seconds, was smoke. She informed Lisenrush.

            “Yes, I smelled it too.”

            “We’re not near anyone’s cabin, are we?”

            “No.”

            Carefully, they stalked in the direction of the scent. Ana let Lisenrush take the lead, attempting to imitate the careful steps that she took, the way that she seemed to be aware of every stray twig or branch that lay in her path. Ana could occasionally hear the sickening crack of a twig or the crunch of snow under her feet, quiet but not silent. Still, if there were any people to be alarmed, they did not make themselves known.

            They came to a small clearing – or perhaps not so much a clearing as a gap between two trees, only about six feet across. There was a haphazard circle of stones with a fire that had mostly burnt out. The larger pieces of wood were mostly white ash, and a faint flame leapt up occasionally. In the center of the fire pit, there was a strange object. It was white, or perhaps a light grey. The object was rectangular, about one and a half feet long.

            Lisenrush glanced at it, but seemed dismissive. Ana took a closer look. “Look at this,” she said. “There’s no soot.”

            Lisenrush scanned the area and then allowed her attention to turn to the block. “You’re right. That’s odd.” The block was totally clean, even though the stones that formed the circle were blackened.

            Ana took a wet stick from the ground and pushed some of the smoldering wood away from the block. She then tapped the block to check its temperature. Rather than hot, the block seemed to have no temperature at all. Her finger felt numb, but not from cold.

            “Don’t touch it,” said Ana. Lisenrush did not seem to be in danger of doing so.

            Ana stood up again and circled around it. From their original angle, the block seemed perfectly uniform, and perfectly squared. However, when looking at the other end of it, she noticed that there were faint circles of a somewhat purplish hue. They were almost like the remnants of scribbles on paper after they had been erased.

            Looking closer, she began to see more details, hard to discern at first due to the dim light. The circles were like the ends of tubes, and here there was a sheared-off white circle, and some reddish-grey fibers, and from this end of the block, there was a rancid smell.

            “It’s an arm,” she said. The moment she said it out loud, she was certain. The length was right, the width, relatively speaking, was a bit too much, but within the right order of magnitude, certainly.

            “An arm?” Lisenrush looked at Ana’s end of the thing. “What makes you say that?”

            Ana pointed to the faint remnants of the muscle, bone, connective tissue, and circulatory tubing. “That’s about what you’d expect to see from a cross-section of a severed arm.”

            Lisenrush looked closer at the square of white. “No it isn’t.”

            “Not a normal arm, of course. This thing isn’t an arm anymore, but it used to be.”

            “And what is it now?”

            “It’s turning into nothing.”

            The Ranger-Captain stood up again. “Well, that’s an interesting theory.”

            “Let me see the back of your neck,” said Ana.

            Lisenrush regarded her skeptically.

            “When I was in my cell, and you and your people were starting to feel strange, I saw that there was… a kind of patch on your neck. I want to see if it’s still there.”

            Lisenrush stepped away quickly. “You saw what?” Ana noted that the rifle was a little higher in her grip now, a little closer to being held in a firing position.

            “I want to check it. It’s very small, less than a coin.”

            “You never mentioned this before.”

            “I forgot it was there,” said Ana. “For whatever reason, I haven’t seen it since then.”

            It’s because she’s very careful not to turn her back on you, Ana realized. In fact, thinking back, that for their entire trek, Lisenrush had put Ana in front of her. Lisenrush always carried the gun. She still doesn’t trust you.

            Ana did her best to keep this realization undetectable. “Just lift up your hair a bit and I’ll take a look.”

            Lisenrush stepped back with one foot. Ana was careful not to advance on her, not yet. In some ways, it was like approaching the snow deer. But Ana had no interest in killing Lisenrush, and was, in fact, ill-equipped.

            Slowly, slowly, Lisenrush lifted her hair out of the way and turned just far enough for Ana to look. Ana could tell that every muscle in Lisenrush’s body was tense, ready to spring into action should the undead fiend decide this was the time to strike.

            The patch was still there. The hair was simply gone in that little misshapen area, and the skin beneath had lost most of its texture and color. It was dead, but not in an interesting way. There was no decay, and no sign of injury or disease, just stillness.

            “Yes, it’s still there. You don’t feel anything strange at the back of your neck?”

            The Ranger Captain turned back to face her again. “No.”

            Ana looked back, her face contorted with concern. “Well, the good news is that it’s not any bigger than it was.”

            “But it’s still there.”

            “Yes, that was the bad news.”

            Lisenrush grunted as she slung the rifle on her shoulder. “I’ll have it checked out after we get to town.”

            Ana nodded. She doubted the doctors would have much to say about it. Ana stepped forward to continue on their path, allowing Lisenrush to walk behind her, but she did so with growing unease. Lisenrush may have still feared her as a dangerous draugr, but Ana wondered if it was not she who should be worried.

            Is this how it started with Vymer?

            There was a large boulder that stood in the forest, almost a small hill. In the dense trees and camouflaged by the snow, it was easy to go quite near it without seeing it.

            It was upon this boulder that the dead man stood. He was clad in iron armor, dark and utilitarian, except for a few stray etchings in symbols of skulls and words in one of the secret languages.

            The draugr looked down upon the two women marching across the woods through his dead, too-wet eyes. The eyes were clouded, but beyond that grey-white clouding was a pale blue glow like ice on the ocean. His nose had worn away, and now looked like a pair of slits in the middle of his face. Likewise, the skin on his cheeks had decayed to the point that yellowed bone stuck out.

            In his right hand – or rather a claw, as all the flesh on that hand had long-since rotted away – he held a great sword. Like the armor, the sword had spots of rust, and the blows and strikes of countless battles had left their mark.

            There was no left hand to help hold the sword. From the shoulder, there were a mere five inches before the flesh hardened and blended into the iron armor above, fusing together and turning rectangular. On the sheared edge, where the arm truly ended, only the faint ghost of what it had once been remained visible. Beyond, the rest of the arm stood within that small fire, refusing to burn.

(Copyright Daniel Szolovits 2013)