The frozen north: Ayrin's journey

Spears of The East

The demon exacted its petty revenge in Ayrin's dreams. They were horrible things of fire and blood, dark nightmares that Ayrin woke from in fear. His heart leapt through his chest and his breath came cold and sharp, cutting off what would have been a scream.

He opened his eyes and was met by the grey-brown sky. The canvas shelter stretched out above him, shuddering in the wind and cold. He crawled wearily from his blankets to find the northerners already awake and the camp half disassembled. Ayrin looked out across the north, regarding it bitterly. The blank, overcast sky and blue-white fields of snow and ice broken by hard, dark stone. Had it really taken so long for its beauty to wear off?

He turned back to the camp. Isiri was only just waking, stirring with a childlike yawn as she shuffled off the thick blanket. Some boyish, unburdened part of Ayrin's mind was struck by how close the two had been sleeping, dwelling on it while he watched her waking, stretching, and rolling up the bedding. The thoughts were dragged from Ayrin's head by the cold wind, whipped up and carried into the distance. Ayrin's near-constant grimace returned as the weather set in and the weariness of travel caught up with him. His feet ached and blistered from walking. His skin was half numb from the cold. His thumb itched where he had cut it last night, evidence of last night's troubles showed itself in the dried blood smearing his thumb. He cleaned it off quickly.

The elderly northerners checked Isiri's wounds while Ayrin and Ashkr silently reheated what food still remained from the previous night. The group ate quickly, or as quick as they could when sharing three bowls between five. When they were finished, they dismantled what remained of the camp and prepared to set off.

This time, Isiri was not lashed to the sledge. Ayrin understood why: The northerners had lead the two southerners eastward so far, the journey having taken them a day past their original destination. The northerners had seen Ayrin and Isiri to the war road and that it was more than generous on their part.

Isiri could walk on her own, it was simply too difficult to have her walk alone when her constant bouts of lunacy meant she needed to be led by hand at all times. It would be safer for her on the sledge but Ayrin didn't have the luxury of that particular option any longer. He reckoned he could lash together a particularly simple sledge if he had to and he planned to do so as soon as he came upon any trees.

The northerners let Aryin keep two pairs of their snowshoes, they were simple things of sticks and corded sinew. Ashkr said that she could make more with ease. The knife, Ayrin was allowed to keep. A gift from the northerners. Though there was more practicality than generosity to the gift-giving. The two southerners simply wouldn't survive without such a basic tool. The northerners sacrificed small portions of their food, dried and otherwise, for the southerners.

They were well-enough stocked with supplies but Ayrin had another worry. Isiri. He watched her warily as she lay among the supplies. She had a sort of drunkenness about her but was mostly conscious. In the space of it took for Ayrin to blink she had faded into a stupor once again, muttering softly in a singsong voice. Ayrin heard the fading words of a verse of some ages-old nursery rhyme. "...Goblin in the kitchen! Throw the salt, throw the steel. Goblin in the kitchen! Through the door, at his heel."

Ayrin caught himself smiling a little. He had heard that particular one before, singing it himself when he was young. A memory came to him of a game of guards and goblins by a broken stone bridge somewhere near home. He took a slow breath, his small smile disappearing. Home. So far away. He looked over to the south and found nothing but flat ground and the low, grey stone road rolling in the direction he was told was homeward. It didn't look like it would take him home, just somewhere equally as cold and remote.

Ayrin felt a tap on his shoulder and span suddenly. Ashkr was behind him, gesturing up to the previous night's camp. "Blankets." She ordered simply.