Jon Burle / pov / prologue

There was nothing to eat he knew. The last of the salt meat had made the thin stew that bubbled in the pot. Jon looked round the one roomed stone shack grimly, the crude bed with grey homespun blankets sat against the back wall, old dark wood chest in the corner containing his few clothes, fire and pot on the rough hearth. Little enough for a man to keep himself this side of the living. There had been a time he knew, when he saw the hovel as something more, but that time was gone. “I’ll leave on the morrow” he said aloud, though there was no one to hear.

He stared at the wall with hollow eyes, noticing the frost in the blackened rafters where the heat of the meagre fire did not reach, not much wood left now. He had seen cold winters before, what man scraping a living in the withered plains had not? But something was different the last few seasons. The snows lasting longer, the cold more bitter, the logs prepared in the shortening summer seasons barely enough to keep the temperature in the stone dwelling warm enough to live. Something’s coming.

 The wood pile had been dangerously small, when at last the short spring had broken. We should have left for Nordhiem then. He had decided against it in his great wisdom, tales of outlaws and impassable roads making the uncertain future here seem the safer course. As well have put the mark of Broumak on them yourself. He sighed, staring at the fire as if for answers. He stirred the stew, settling back he pulled the blanket round him once again. The fire crackled, a log spiting, once a comforting sound it now only served to remind him of how little fuel was left. Of how slender the margin was. He looked at the corner beside the back wall.

The grave fire’s to soften the ground for digging had been a luxury he could ill afford. Wood was heat, and heat was life. He had piled a cairn of cold stone instead, the old way, this was where they lay now covered in snow and ice, like all else. The famine and cold took the weak, harsh winds and snows destroying the crop that so many on the plains depended upon. When Jessa became ill she hadn’t the will or reserves to fight, the tragedy before having striped both away. When she closed her eyes, her last sigh had been one of relief it had sounded. “I’ll see you soon maybe” he spoke aloud again, wishing to fill the emptiness of the dwelling, only broken now by the sounds of the wind without.

 The basaltic stone city was warmed by the fire of the mountain nordrammas, harnessed in some ancient way by the Valusians, now long dead. It’s already overcrowded; every season more headed for the warmth of the city.  As like starve on the streets of Nordhiem as freeze here. He had seen the thin end of the human wedge before. And you’ll see it again, it waits in Nordhiem.

 He remembered again Calodath in the final day of the siege, the starving in the city thick like flies on a gibbet, bodies dead and rotting in the street where they lay. The pall of smoke that hung over the city from the siege fires. Corruption sweet in the air. Overlaid yet undisguised by the acrid smell of the plague fires, blazes lit to cleanse ill humours. The haunted looks of the survivors as they had watched fearful from doorways. Terrified lest other horrors of siege be unleashed. The soldiers marching unopposed through the city, the place silent as a plague house. What will you do there? He had no answer to that. He had no answers to many things now.

 Another farmer in a city overflowing? And the white death was coming, he could feel it. You weren’t always a farmer. Maybe you never were. He briefly glanced at the empty corner. He looked up at the metal skinned ironwood shield hanging on the back wall, the grey sun on red field emblem of Romark now faded and weathered. The dun hold is many leagues from here. He glanced at the studded chest at the end of the bed. He knew at the bottom there was a sword in oiled leather. To protect it from rust for the day that would never come. Well the day was here he knew. Fighting and farming, It’s all I know, maybe the gods will take more delight in butchery? He smiled. Always! The answer came to him easily. There are no gods. He had seen enough to know the cant of the world was a scream of pain, the closed fist rather than outstretched hand, nothing so despised by men as poverty, nothing, so victimised as weakness. We are what we are. 

He hefted the sword, examining the familiar hilt, the leather grip blackened by old sweat, worn by use. The steel sharp and glistening with oil, felt heavy in his hand, unaccustomed yet familiar, like an old home returned to. He slowly traced the blood channel with a finger, Swore it’d be a cold day in hell before I took up the sword again. Holding the blade close he glanced at the blue eyes reflected therein, and it is, gods be damned! I’m sorry Jess. He felt again the dull shame at not trying to bury them, stumbling half frozen inside, arms burning with fatigue from pilling stone. Breaking up the two small cots for fuel, great full for the warmth, anyway. If this is hell, it’s frozen, by all that’s true.

In the dark of the dwelling he lay looking at the small fire in the hearth. Its light casting mobile shadows on the rafters. Hail drummed on the shutters. The winds sounding like a giant trying to tear the house apart from without, deadly, implacable, relentless. He shivered, pulled the blankets tighter about him: how bare the corner looked without the cots. He closed his eyes.