Chapter 15 - Beyond The Road

For a few days after the accident with foreign mana, Mari would not let Arien near the cows unless someone went with him. He thought it was excessive, but the pain in his mana channels made arguing difficult.
It had dulled since the first day, but every attempt to move mana still felt like dragging thread through a wound. Even Mana Sense, usually effortless, left a faint ache behind his eyes if he pushed too hard.
He did as he was told, more or less. He ate what Mari put in front of him, slept when she ordered him to sleep, and let Alia follow him to the pasture with all the solemn authority of someone a couple years older and therefore practically ancient. Being unable to experiment was the worst part.
By the fourth evening, he was sitting by the hearth with a blanket around his shoulders, listening to rain tap softly against the shutters and considering whether dying of boredom would count as a natural death.
Sari sat nearby, mending one of Wod’s shirts with quick, irritated movements. “You look like someone buried your favorite cow,” she said.
Arien gave her a wounded look. Sari smiled faintly and returned to the shirt, though the smile did not last long.
Across the room, Terry sat with his pipe unlit between his fingers. Every now and then, Arien caught his father watching him. Terry rarely addressed feelings directly, and apparently concern was no exception.
“You were lucky,” Terry said at last.
Arien looked up. “With the cows?”
“With whatever foolishness put you on your back for two days.” Terry took the pipe from his mouth and tapped the ash into the hearth. “Your mother says you were curious. That’s exactly what worries me. Curiosity is good when it makes you ask which mushrooms are safe. Less so when you decide tasting one is the quickest way to find out.”
So that was Terry’s theory. Arien saw no reason to correct him.
Sari snorted. “That sounds like half the stories you tell us.”
Terry gave her a dry look. “Most of the stories were about people who were already strong enough to survive being stupid.”
That made Wod laugh from the table. Even Mari’s mouth twitched.
Sari set the shirt in her lap. “And what about the people who weren’t strong enough?”
“Most of them never made it into the stories.” Terry rubbed his thumb along the stem of his pipe. “My grandfather nearly became one of them.”
That got everyone’s attention. Terry rarely spoke about his own family. He told stories of kings, gods, cursed swords, and cities with walls higher than hills, but almost never about the people who had come before him. Even Wod straightened, while Alia edged closer to Mari.
“This one is true,” Terry said. “Or as true as family stories get. My father’s father told it to me when I was still young enough to think courage always looked impressive.”
Terry finally lit his pipe. A thin curl of smoke rose toward the rafters.
“My grandfather was no hero. He wasn’t an Explorer or a knight, just a farmer’s son with strong legs and a bad sense of when to keep his mouth shut.”
Sari’s eyes flicked toward Wod, who gave her a flat look.
“When soldiers came through his village asking for men who knew the old forest paths, he volunteered.”
“Why?” Sari asked.
“Because he was seventeen.”
Sari smiled, and even Wod looked amused.
“The silver helped. So did hearing they were headed near the Widow Swamps.”
Lisa, who had been pretending not to listen, turned her head.
“The Widow Swamps?” Sari asked.
Terry nodded.
“Not into them. No sane man goes into the Widow Swamps without good reason and better pay. They were headed near the border, where a Portal had opened. A small one, thank the gods. Too small for an army, but large enough to cause trouble.”
“For monsters?” Wod asked.
“For dead men,” Terry said.
The room went still.
“At first, my grandfather thought the soldiers were fools. They moved slowly, stopping to inspect patches of mud, broken branches, and stretches of road where the birds had gone quiet.
“They found the first body before noon. A charcoal burner. Or what was left of him. The man had been dead at least two days, but his hands had clawed deep marks into the dirt.”
“But if he was dead, how did he scratch the ground?” Alia whispered.

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“There are things in this world that don’t care much whether a man is dead,” Terry said quietly.
Arien felt that familiar pull settle over his attention. He even forgot about the ache behind his eyes.
Undead.
Real undead, not a tavern tale or a game monster with predictable weaknesses and loot tables.
“The soldiers dragged the body away from the road and set it on fire. My grandfather thought that was cruel. Maybe even sinful. Then the captain told him to watch the hands. The fingers kept moving until the flames finally took them.”
Mari traced the sign of Sul over her chest. Sari did not.
“That would have been a good time to turn back,” Terry said. “The soldiers had orders, though, so they kept following the old road. By evening, they found the Portal site.”
“What did it look like?” Arien asked before he could stop himself.
Terry studied him for a moment. “Wrong. The trees leaned away from it. The ground was black and soft, though there had been no rain for days. Flies covered everything. There were bodies there too. Men. Horses. Things that had once been wolves. All of them dead.
“The first Zombie rose while one of the soldiers was checking the bodies. It was slow and clumsy, and the soldier laughed when it tried to grab him. Then three more rose behind him.
“Zombies are slow most of the time,” Terry said. “Smash the head, and they stay down. But in a crowd, or in mud, or when a man panics, slow is fast enough.
“The captain pulled the soldier clear. Lost two fingers doing it. After that, no one laughed.
“They tried to burn the bodies, but the smoke brought more. Dead things from the trees. Dead things from the ditch. A horse with half its belly open. A woman with no eyes. The soldiers formed a ring, shields out, blades low, fire behind them, and still the dead kept coming.”
Arien could almost see it: mud and smoke, men struggling not to slip while corpses kept pressing toward them no matter how many fell. Nothing about it resembled the clean fantasy battles he remembered from games.
“Were there Explorers?” Sari asked. Terry’s gaze lingered on her.
“Aye. They came near midnight. Ten of them.”
Both Sari and Wod leaned forward.
“Ten?” Arien asked.
“The Guild sends them in teams of ten. Even the soldiers stopped shouting when they saw them.”
He drew on his pipe. “One carried a spear that shone blue at the tip. Another wore armor made of overlapping scales. There was a woman in a cloak of feathers, and every time she moved, the wind moved with her. My grandfather remembered the others only in pieces: a silver mask, a black axe, a staff with no flame that still gave off heat.”
Sari’s eyes shone in the firelight. “They must have been incredible.”
“They were, just not like the bards make it sound. They barely spoke, and none of them seemed excited to be there. They looked over the dead, the wounded, the soldiers holding the line, and the Portal beyond the trees.
“Then they moved.”
“What did they do?” Wod asked.
“They cut straight toward the Portal. The dead barely slowed them. They went only as far as they needed, without wasting time on anything that wasn’t in their way. That was when my grandfather first understood the difference between knowing how to fight and making a living fighting things that should not exist.
“The captain shouted after them, begging them to help the wounded first. The woman with the feather cloak looked back at him and said, ‘If the Portal stays open, there will be no wounded to help.’ Then she continued toward it.”
“That’s cruel.”
“Maybe,” Mari said quietly. “But if they hadn’t closed that Portal, the nearby villages would have been next. Those soldiers accepted the risk when they took service. The families living there didn’t.”
Sari turned on her. “So we’re supposed to just accept that?”
Mari’s hands stilled over the bowl. “We’re supposed to survive. We can argue about whether it was fair afterward.”
Terry gave her a brief look. Whatever passed between them had clearly been discussed before.
“The Explorers cut their way through to the Portal,” he said. “Then, one by one, they stepped through.”
“What happened inside?” Sari asked.
Terry shook his head. “No one knows. Once the last of them crossed, they vanished from sight. The Portal stayed open, but nothing came back through it. No voices, no clash of steel, not even the sound of a spell.
“The soldiers kept fighting outside the Portal while the dead kept coming. Some tried to drag the wounded clear. Others prayed. More men died, and nothing came back through the Portal.”
“How long?” Wod asked.
“Long enough for my grandfather to start wondering whether Sul would receive him in the heavens, and whether his mother would ever learn where he died.
“Then, all at once, the dead stopped. They dropped where they stood, as if someone had cut strings no one had known were there.”
“And the Explorers?” Sari asked.
“Eight of them came back. The woman with the feather cloak was bleeding from one ear and carrying a broken sword that had not been hers when she went in. One of the others was laughing softly to himself and would not stop.
“The tallest of them only said, ‘The anchor is dead. Burn the bodies before sunrise.’
“The Portal folded in on itself behind them without any thunder or flash of light. A moment later, it was gone.
“Then the soldiers counted the living. Sixty-eight had marched out. Twenty-six came back. My grandfather was one of them.
“He came home with silver, a scar from wrist to elbow, and no more interest in old roads. His parents thought he was lucky to be alive. He spent the next fifty years calling himself a fool.”
Sari’s gaze stayed fixed on the hearth. “But he got to see it.”
Terry frowned. “See what?”
“The world. Explorers. Places beyond these villages.”
“And a great many people die.”
Sari picked up the shirt again but did not start sewing. “Maybe that was still better than never leaving.”
Mari set the bowl down harder than necessary.
“Sari.”
“No, really. Every story ends the same way. Stay home, keep your head down, and be grateful if nothing worse happens. Is that supposed to be wisdom?”
Terry rubbed a hand over his face.
“For people like us,” he said, “nothing worse happening is not a small thing.”
Sari looked down at the shirt and said nothing.
Terry was more than a farmer who smoked by the hearth and filled the evenings with stories. Arien had always thought of him in terms of the farm and the village, but Terry also carried the lessons of people who had gone beyond the familiar roads, survived, and decided that home was enough.
Arien could respect that, even if he could not make himself want the same life.
Across the hearth, Sari stared into the fire as if it were a road.