Trembling With Fear 09/23/2018

The City

Night fell across the borderlands. The rider paused there for a minute, waited for the grey grass to whisper a memory. Instead, the reeds rustled, possessed, like wraiths.

Silent fields.

They were a bad omen. His mother had gone to work with wordless wheat once before. She’d never come home again.

The rider lifted his visor. He judged himself still beyond the watchman’s gaze, there, a mere a step outside the thin embrace of the city. He decided it would be best to seek refuge within. True, a stranger among strangers was a bad omen, but the road behind haunted him, in all the ways empty things do. He could no longer suffer its company. So he coughed, kicked the side of his horse, and rode down into the valley. The bones of long-abandoned towers rose out of the dirt to greet him.

The rider kept to the roadway, galloping at speed. Once, through trees, he saw a campfire, but he resisted the temptation to approach it.

Wandering fires.

Another bad omen. His father had stamped a few flames into the dirt once before. He’d never come home again.

On the other side of the phantom forest, the rider reared to a stop. There, where the first defences were destined to be, stood the wasteland.

Moss crawled all over the city, feasting, stripping flesh from bone bit by bit. The growth infected towers, bridges, statues. Even the walls, a hundred feet tall, had been consumed by the sickness. Black, moist, glowing—the wretched organ pulsed and breathed.

“Easy girl,” the rider said, as his horse wrestled beneath him.

The rider held his breath and passed into the mouth of the city, where only a skeleton of a gate remained. It hung open now, eternally, as if it was laughing, or screaming.

It was clear the city was making a last stand, though from exactly what, the rider couldn’t tell. He weaved his way between rubble, pausing only once, when he met the body of a man cloaked with blood. A misfortune left behind in the retreat. It would be a bad omen to leave him unburied. The rider passed him by though, because he was dead, and he’d long distrusted men of that persuasion. In fact, he was almost glad to press further into the carcass of the city. Of course, had he understood the true nature of decay, he’d have realised most things rot from the inside out.

The rider shivered beneath his cloak. Around him, the city shone with a ghost-light, a morgue-light, a light so dead it couldn’t cut the shadow. From the cracks of the highest window, pales eyes hunted him, selfish in their pursuit. Worse still, they saw everything. They saw him unarmed and they saw his fear.

The rider turned from the nightmare and urged his horse forward. Instead of obliging though, she paused in the middle of the street as if, after all the years, she’d lost the will to go even one step further.

“On,” the rider said.

The beast pretended not to hear.

The rider glanced over his shoulder. Behind, the little eyes watched with renewed interest.  The boldest among them, hungry for something more than darkness, dared even to follow.

“On.”

The horse threw back her head and snorted.

“On!”

The rider kicked the horse hard. He placed the blow in an old war-wound, a spot intimate as murder. At last, she lurched forward, stumbling down the path.

The rider’s heart emptied inside him. The horse was his last friend, the bearer of his worldly burdens. Years before, they’d founded their relationship on silence. He always wondered was the horse mute, or like him, wary of words.

Dangerous things—saved for curses and prayers.

The rider breathed a sigh of relief as the horse settled beneath him. The kick had been a last resort. Or maybe a strange kind of mercy.

A thrice-disobedient horse.

It would have been a bad omen. His brother had ridden off to battle on the back of one before. He’d never come home again. Or at least, not as the man who’d left.

Ahead, a worm-eaten palisade wall loomed out of the darkness. A single figure bobbed up and down along the battlements. The silver tip of his spear paraded above him.

The rider snapped his reins. Again, the horse resisted, even as the eyes multiplied on all sides. He imagined they must have made quite a sight, cantering up to the gate with the hosts of hell licking at their heels. The sentry waved for him to stop.

“Who goes there?”

“Rider.”

The sentry smiled, but the expression was wrong, like he’d have been naked without it. “I can see that. What business brings you to the city?”

“Rest.”

The sentry grinned. “Rest of what?”

The rider clenched a fist. “Shelter.”

The sentry squinted at the sky. “I hadn’t noticed the rain.”

This time, the rider didn’t answer. As expected, it robbed the sentry of his armour. He soon called for the gate to be opened.

 

***

 

“Something got you spooked?” the sentry said, when the gate had been firmly locked once more.

The rider huffed and dismounted. “Eyes.” He gestured upwards. “Blinking. Following.”

The sentry knitted his eyebrows. He craned his head over the battlements. “Do you mean the stars?”  he said.

The man didn’t wait for the rider to answer. He bowled over, mouthing half-words, choking with laughter. His spear knocked against the fence, rhythmically, a sure sign it mocked the rider too.

The rider responded with a grunt. With some effort, he tied his horse to a fence nearby. Then, ignoring her idle protests, he headed in search of a local inn, a place where the laughter would at least be mocking itself.

He trudged away so fast though, that he didn’t hear the sentry behind interrupt himself a second too soon. He didn’t smell the danger, even as it lay thick amongst the fog at his feet. He didn’t see the sentry remove his helmet, revealing the old frown hidden beneath.

But the sentry saw everything. He saw the rider unarmed and he saw his fear.