Screaming Man

Go back the other way: Where are They?

Follow this back to: Villages

Illumina turned away from the sight of the bridge and what was happening beyond it. There was nowhere to turn. She could not turn back without abandoning the purpose that had brought her there in the first place. The Prince needed to get to the South Lord and try to persuade him to support the King in some substantial way. That was where they were going and why they were traveling. That was why they had been pursued and they killed those that pursued them and tried to stop them.

She spoke this fiercely to herself trying to turn herself round, back to the bridge and the horrors of crossing it, of traveling beyond it. All she could see was the look on Ivo's face as he came back after interrogating the survivors of the first attack, there were no survivors. All she could hear was the dull crack as they broke the leg of the unconscious guard. The sounds and vision blurred with the horrors of the bridge as she tried to make herself turn back and face it, for the moment she was blind and deaf, incapable of any voluntary movement.

She came back to herself to find Cavalla walking slowly down the road following the path to the bridge. The others followed her and the crowd of those yet to cross parted before her. Daisy trotted along beside them occasionally having to dodge between the people either side of the road. The others followed.

To begin with there was nothing to see. No arrows reached beyond the bridge. Then they came to the bridge itself. Cavalla stopped, standing still, and the others gathered around and behind her. The flow of people onto the bridge stopped. Illumina sat quietly until the last person had walked off the other side, leaving no one, at least no one living still on the bridge, the dead were there in plenty.

The passage of the people had cleared the main deck of the bridge but bodies were piled up against the parapet, some of them hanging over it, staring vacantly down at the water or up at the sky, some of them still alive though barely so. There was blood everywhere.

Cavalla snorted and stepped sideways, rolling her eyes and looking down at something just off the bridge, rolled into the ditch at the side of the road. Manueline could not stop herself, she followed Cavallas eyes, the moment seeming to turn into an endless, living nightmare as she looked down at the severed head of the swordsman who had been taken up by the crowd.

She remembered his scream. The sound came back to her as she looked down into the bloody hole that used to be his mouth. Of his nose, his eyes, his ears, there was nothing left, just a bloody, tattered mask only recognizable as a face from the holes where the eyes and mouth used to be.

Manueline retched and heaved, covering her mouth with her hand. She turned away from the sight of the screaming man but could not get it out of her mind. The remains of his face imposed itself on her vision and worked its way into what she saw when she looked at the world. The Prince reached over to her, drawing his hand back before he touched her, asking if she was all right. She shook her head but said nothing.

She turned Cavalla round, pushing the Prince out of the way and pushing back past the horses of the others behind her. As she passed beyond them, she spoke over her shoulder, without turning to look at the bridge again, "I will not take this road." She saw the third straggler, she beckoned to him, "Come, I need to talk to you." She rode slowly back up the hill they had just descended, followed by the third straggler, with the others close behind.

Illumina rode on beyond where they had watched the events on the bridge. She turned off the road and made her way up a small hill that gave a view of the river and some of the country to the west. She did not make her way right up to the top but stopped part way up on the northern side where she could look back towards the forest where they had come from.

Without a word, she dismounted and took the saddle off Cavalla and began to brush her down, taking comfort from the solid, warm bulk of the animal. She spent a long time over brushing and combing her coat, cleaning out her hooves, even trimming some of the hair in her mane and tail. The others had settled round a campfire by the time she finished.

The Prince was sitting alone, as he usually did now that he had to be taken as the personification of death. His loneliness seemed especially acute to Illumina as she walked over to the campfire. She called him over and they all sat round the fire; Ivo, Duilio, Felice, Cosimo, Nina, the Prince and the third straggler. None of them offered to eat any of the food Nina had prepared. They drank hot tea, the smell of it acting like incense for the people in the circle round the fire, mixing with the smell of the wood smoke and the food cooking in the pot.

It grew dark and Illumina looked round the circle, looking deliberately at each of the people round the fire, she spoke again, "I will not take that road, nor can I turn away from it. For the sake of my own people, for the sake of the people of the lowlands and for the sake of the people in the crowd something must be done." She threw caution to the winds and asked the third straggler, "If we ordered them to stop, do you think they would?"

He looked at her seeing that there was something different in how she spoke to him; something had fallen away between them. He shook his head, "I don't know. Really they cannot stop. As matters stand there is never enough food to go around, moving on from one village to another is the only thing that keeps them alive. If you told them to stop, they might for a few days but hunger would soon drive them on. That is what happened in the forest; they were starving and they became so hungry that they had to move; they could not stay where they were."

Manueline looked round the circle and asked, "Libby, what do you think?"

The Prince stared back for a moment, "I think we should tell them to stop here, at least try to slow them down. We should go back to the forest and find the people who look like us and do whatever we must to persuade them to help us. The problem for us is that we do not speak their language; we cannot talk to them directly. These others that look like us, you can be sure they do speak the language."

Ivo looked at him skeptically, "What makes you think they would want to stop the mob? Presumably, they are responsible for its existence in the first place, why would they want to stop it. On the contrary, I think they will do everything they can to encourage it to do as much damage as possible. I wouldn't be surprised if they don't bring armed men with them. By the time that mob's finished with the Low Country, it won't take more than a few men to take it over."

Manueline looked again to the third straggler, asking him, "Did you hear anything of a group of armed men coming through the forest?"

He smiled, "No, it would not be allowed. We do not guide armies through the forest. These people came unarmed and with no intent to do anything other than follow the same path as the personification of death. We led them through the forest. It was that or watch them die in it. We did not want so much death in the forest. No. No army will come through the forest."

The Prince nodded his head, "We have all heard the stories, this crowd of people is just an accident, no one planned it; no one meant it to happen this way. I doubt the people who look like us have any idea of conquest or power from it. I bet they are just as caught up in it as anyone else and will help us in any effort to turn it to a different path."

Ivo still looked skeptical but said nothing. The others were simply relieved to be on a path that would take them away from the mob for a time. Ivo threw a stick on the fire, watching the sparks rise for a moment before speaking, "I don't think any of the people who tried to stop the mob at the bridge survived. They were surrounded before they knew what was happening to them, they all died. It means no word of what happened will come to the people in the south except through rumor and hearsay. I think the Lord of the North died and most of his men with him so there is nothing now between the mob and the road to Loro. We should try to warn the Lord of the South at least. We were trying to get to him; I think that one of us should keep trying. If he discovers we were here and did not warn him, he could regard it as an attempt to destroy him. If we do warn him he might look on us favorably, he might not."

The Prince looked at him trying to read his motives; he was a hard man to read. "Do you want to go?"

Ivo laughed, "No, I don't want to go. I want to go back to Loro and have nothing to do with all of this. Yes I will go if it seems the right thing to do."

Again, the Prince watched him for a moment finding him hard to read. There was a clear sense of hostility in both his words and his manner. The 'all of this' he wanted nothing to do with undoubtedly included the Prince as well as the mob. "You are probably a better judge than I am, it seems to me two men would stand a much better chance on such a journey than one. If we send anyone we should send two." So it was decided, Ivo and Duilio would ride for the south and try to get word to the Lord of the South, warning him of what was coming and what had happened to the northerners.

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