Villages

Follow this back to: Don't Touch

She spoke again to the last straggler, asking him if he would act as guide for them. He agreed and they formed a circle round him as he explained where they were and where they could go from there. The river, apparently was quite close by but the banks were heavily wooded and not passable.

He suggested they could just summon a boat Illumina side stepped the suggestion saying they would prefer to travel on land, they would need the horses and the horses wouldn't take kindly to traveling on the water, especially in a small boat. He suggested instead that they just follow the procession of people. In fact, if they made their way down the path, he could go ahead of them telling the people on the path to make way. It was the simplest and most direct route given that they did not want to use the river.

With some trepidation, they all saddled and mounted the horses. The three stragglers went ahead of them. The old man and the old woman evidently determined to maintain their connection with the party at all costs. When they came to the path, the third straggler started shouting something that Illumina assumed meant, "Make way!" though there was a great deal more to it than could be accounted for by that simple message. The old man and the old woman took up the words as well and turned the third straggler's words into a chant that preceded them as they went down the path.

The people all stepped off the path, all of them bowing as Illumina and the others went past, many of them falling to their knees and bowing their heads down to the ground. There were cries as they went by, whether of greeting or something else they could not tell, but Illumina recognized the old man's words about the bride of death in many of the cries directed towards her and could guess at much of the rest. They traveled on through the remainder of the afternoon and eventually came to the head of the procession of people, or at least the procession slowly petered out. As the procession petered out so did the forest and looking back, seeing all the people behind her, Illumina imagined the forest was coming alive, the trees turning into ragged destitute people who staggered out into the open countryside looking for a different life.

They came to a small hill with a copse of trees near the top and a stream around the base. They decided it was as good a place as any to stop for the night. As soon as they made camp, people from the procession started camping around them, gathering round the base of the hill, slowly spilling over the flat ground around the hill. Fires sprang up as the light faded and Illumina walked round the hill finding that people were camping on the other side as well. It seemed thousands and thousands of them gathered round the hill and she wondered what brought them there, what could possibly explain it? What could the connection be with Nina and the violent reaction she had to the description of the man who personified death as being similar to the Prince?

Then it struck her like lighting from a clear sky; Nina thought the personification of death was her own child. Illumina literally staggered almost tripping up as she stumbled to a halt, she was stunned by the implications. Not that she believed for a moment that the man could be Nina's child but she could quite understand the anguish it would provoke in her. Illumina circled the hill coming back to the camp where she sat with Nina for a while talking about the events of the day.

They set a watch and Illumina had the morning. She sat back under the trees watching the camp and the low-lying ground around the hill. The trickle of people had stopped. There were still a lot of fires burning but no evidence that any more people were coming out of the forest. As the sun rose out of the east, she found herself looking north towards the forest. It seemed still dark and somehow closed off despite the rising sun. No more people came but there was still a sense of lurking menace about it that only dissipated as the sun came full into the sky and drove the last of the night mist away.

They ate breakfast, broke camp and left while the morning was still young. As they rode down the hill there was the strange sense of all the people around them orienting themselves on the group of people riding through their midst. It was as though the people were some strange species of sunflower drawn to the light and yet not rooted in place for, as Illumina and the others passed by, there was an eerie rustling of voices and human bodies as people whispered to each other, gathered up their meager possessions and simply started walking after them.

The wave of movement seemed to travel through the crowd and slowly overtook them so that they found themselves moving in a sea of people. The third straggler still led them accompanied by the other two, practically the only discernible voice being the cries from the three of them apparently calling on the crowd to make way. They rode on a path, necessarily slowly because of the pace of the people ahead of them. There were people spread out either side of them and behind, just walking across the countryside, regardless of paths or obstacles, like a giant horde of blind and dumb animals, following some migratory instinct that led them inexorably in the same direction, an instinct they were powerless to defy.

Illumina had the horrible image of them coming to a river and simply drowning in it or coming to a cliff and walking over it to their deaths taking with them every living thing around them. Illumina noticed people joining them, walking into the crowd from somewhere across the surrounding country.

Part way through the morning they caught site of the river and shortly afterwards came to the first village. The crowd reached the village well ahead of Illumina and the others. By the time they arrived there was almost nothing left of it. Some structures had literally been pushed over by the crush of people passing through. There were no animals left. Illumina saw no sign of any local people. The crowd had stripped anything useful out of any house not destroyed or burnt to the ground. Illumina and the others were shocked. They stopped but the crowd just flowed on around them. Illumina did not dare tell the third straggler to order the crowd to halt. If it would not halt on its own, she was not about to try to impose her will on it. All they could do was watch it walk on towards the south, down the west bank of the river.

Around midday, they came upon another village and it met the same fate as the first one. Illumina was sickened by it but helpless to do anything. The horrors of the stricken villages was as nothing compared to the events of the afternoon. They came to a place where a smaller river joined the main one from the west. There was a solid stone bridge over the smaller river. They came over a rise, seeing the bridge from a good distance away as the first of the crowd came up to it. Illumina felt uneasy as she thought of the crush of people going over the bridge and what could happen to those too weak to keep their footing. That was before she saw the men on the other side. Ivo pointed and said grimly, "So we find the Lord of the North again, though I bet he wasn't expecting to see us here."

Illumina looked where he was pointing and saw a line of armed men standing beyond the bridge. Evidently, the Lord of the North had come to the bridge hoping to stop the horde of people from coming any further onto his lands. They sat on their horses and watched as the crowd surged towards the bridge. It was not even a question of those in front being pushed on by those behind. They all seemed of one mind, which was to get across the river. As they came, the men across the river strung bows and aimed, holding their fire. Illumina could see a couple of men walking up and down behind the line, evidently having to speak to and encourage the men in the line. She could see one or another of the bowmen turning, clearly wavering in their intent. The line held and they waited until the first people were part way across the bridge before they fired.

Illumina saw people fall, some trampled under foot, some falling or thrown off the bridge, still they came on. A group of the men beyond the bridge broke away from the line and, following one of the men who had been walking up and down behind the line, they ran to the bridge and began hacking at the oncoming crowd. Illumina could see people shy away from the direct threat of a naked blade but now the crowd behind did push those in front. A pile of reluctant dead and dying began to grow at the far end of the bridge.

There was a distant murmur of shouts and cries from the people on and around the structure. It seemed like a noise from another world. There were no distinct sounds, no individual voices. Only once did Illumina hear an individual voice and it haunted her for months afterwards. One of the men hacking at the crowd on the far end of the bridge slipped and fell. He fell towards the crowd and was instantly drawn into it like a leaf drawn into a whirlpool. Illumina lost sight of him for a moment but then was horrified to see him lifted up above the crowd and passed hand over hand over the heads of the crowd, screaming down the length of the bridge. They were tearing at him with their bare hands as he went, literally tearing him to pieces. The screaming went on until half way down the bridge when he finally, mercifully, fell silent.

His body never made it across the bridge. Nothing other than his head, which Illumina later saw lying by the side of the road, a mangled bloody mess, something she would not have recognized were it not for the memory of his screaming that still rang in her mind.

The bowmen continued shooting and people were falling and dying in the narrow confines of the bridge. People began to swim across the river and some of the bowmen started shooting at people in the water; some died, many swam on. On the bridge, Illumina saw people doing something to the parapet. At first, she thought they might be trying to break it down for some reason, then she saw the first stone go flying through the air and she realized what they were doing. Another quickly followed the first stone and soon there was a hail of rocks flying through the air aimed at the swordsmen on the end of the bridge. Many of the rocks fell among the crowd. It made no difference to the throwers, they carried on throwing the rocks anyway and the crowd backed away a little from the swordsmen who seemed to disappear under a shower of rocks.

The first swordsman went down to a roar of approval from the mob of people on the bridge. Another quickly followed him and the crowd rushed the remaining men, literally trampling them into the dust. The bowmen had been fixated on the drama on the bridge and lost track of a large group of people who had crossed the river a little higher up. They all threw down their bows and drew swords as the crowd from the bridge rushed at them but the group from up river took them from behind and Illumina just saw the whole line disappear in a frantic screaming mob of people. Some small knots of men stood and fought for a time but they were isolated and disorganized; they never stood a chance.

Whether any of them got away, Illumina could not tell, for she had to turn away as the mob reached the horses, knowing what they would do. People slaughtering each other was one thing but the prospect of what they would do to the terrified animals was too much for her and she had to turn away.

To follow this thread in the story go to: Screaming Man

The next section to read is: Going Through

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