Showing posts with label His Dark Tomb. Show all posts
Showing posts with label His Dark Tomb. Show all posts
He waited behind the tent for awhile until the two military folk marched off in what appeared to be a predetermined direction. He sat there long after their noisy departure was lost in the whipping winds. He thought about how ridiculous the situation was and how great it'd be if he could just return home and be with Sally again.
Maxwell imagined her sultry hair, red lips and her salty perfume. But she was gone, lost to him forever through death throes of the empire which he had served in as an academic. He'd never hear the name Max again, either. No, that was reserved only for his long dead mother and his lost Sally. Now he was Maxwell, however pretentious it sounded.
It didn't take too long to pack up what remained. Most of his worldly possessions were in the pack he had abandoned at the bar in a fit of stupidity. He used a smaller less sturdy one and crammed it full of his remaining journals, books and supplies. The military man, Aeolus, had stolen the book he had purchased from Mary Ann the previous day. He cursed him and wondered why such a dim witted thug would want to read about Norse mythology. He was surprised the man could even read.
But books, especially old ones were a hot commodity in the south. Maybe he intended to sell or trade it for an instrument of destruction to maim or disfigure someone who irked his authoritarian style.
Maxwell knew he couldn't bring the tent or the little pot bellied stove with him. So he snuffed the fire out, warmed his hands one last time and did the only thing he could think of. He followed the two strangers into the night.
He waited awhile before his journey, to give them a healthy lead. But before too long he could hear the man's loud laughter and traces of the woman's voice. They were weighed down with heavy armor and packs far more impressive than his own so it was to be expected he'd catch up with them.
He walked in the man's tracks until he heard the howling and yipping of hounds. It was then that he left his trail and found a position down wind. After the hounds rejoined them (two of them by what he could hear) they didn't hesitate much to make camp. So he crouched in the snow and watched their flickering fire in the distance. He didn't dare get too close, but instead he watched them warm themselves, play with the dogs and generally behave like they were on a camping expedition.
They were in the service and were used to roughing it. And they weren't shy about enjoying themselves on salted meats and heavy breads that they produced from their packs. He could smell the wood smoke and sour dough as he pathetically nibbled on a tiny fragment of a candy bar he had purchased weeks prior. When it was gone he turned the wind to his back and looked to make camp himself.
It didn't take long. He found an enormous, but dead willow and curled up at the base of its truck. It offered some respite from the driving wind, but the chill still seeped through his clothes and blankets.
Maxwell fell asleep within minutes, his hand grasped firmly on the butt of his pistol.
He awoke to the man's accusing face and a gunblade pointed in his general direction. The woman was standing some distance back with a composite bow pointed, he assumed, at the spot between his eyes.
Aeolus' hounds were of local stock and thus enormous. They were bearing their teeth, mouths expelling frosty breath. He could smell their breakfast in the morning air and it stank.
He felt his hand up to shield his eyes from the morning sun.
"Good morning, sunshine."
Aeolus said, his gunblade humming softly.
"Wakey wakey, eggs and baccy."
Maxwell gritted his teeth and started to stand, but the thug jerked his weapon and made a couple of throat noises.
"Not so fast, friend. Just relax for a second. Why don't you share with us the reason why you've been following us all night and why you're just in earshot of our camp."
"I'm not your friend," he said, marshaling all of his courage as he stood under four sets of watchful eyes. "And I believe you took something that belongs to me. Applied Norse Theology, by R. Herrman. Seen it?"
"Damnit, Aeolus. I told you to cut it out." The woman barked while withdrawing her bow, she marched up to the man and punched his arm. His face went slack and he withdrew his weapon. Jabbing a finger toward their camp with a whistle the dogs bounded off through the snow.
They stood there for sometime talking. Maxwell developed a liking for the woman instantly. Her name was Thesair. The man, Aeolus, took a bit getting used to. They explained they were part of a larger unit and were working on reuniting with their fellow servicemen. It turned out the book thief was their commanding officer. Maxwell found this both amusing and distressing.
Unsurprisingly he offered little insight on his own life or why he was in the area. But he did reveal that the locals didn't much like him after an idle comment about a black eye he was unaware of.
"Mirrors," he quipped "are uncommon in these parts. My apologies."
They invited him over for breakfast. They had already eaten, but it was the least they could do. His book was reluctantly returned to him after some scolding by Thesair.
Aeolus apologized and half heartedly offered some gold for it, but he didn't have enough in his purse to even cover a fraction of its true value. But he politely declined, instead simply saying it wasn't for sale. Sentimental value and all. It was a half truth, but it held.
It wasn't before long he was shoveling bread and cured vegetables into his mouth. The conversation moved briskly but inevitably drifted toward the book. The man was very interested in it, specifically the notes in the margins.
Maxwell dismissed them. "A vandal before I purchased it," he said swallowing a half chewed fragment of bread. "But a sophisticated one. She's pretty insightful."
The man turned to be a wanna-be academic.
"Norse myth, eh? I was always interested in them. My nanny would tell me stories when I was a kid about Thor, Odin. It's why I wanted it. Sorry. Again."
Maxwell smiled. It was the first time in weeks. "It's fine. At least I got it back."
"Why do you have it all the way up here? You sound like you're not from these parts." Thesair said while repairing the shaft on a expertly machine ground arrow.
"I'm looking for something." He replied, eying her from across the small campfire. "Something you might also be interested in."
He had her attention.
"I'm looking for Nidhoggr."
They both stared at him, mouths agape. But there was a sharp yelp in the distance, followed by a terrible noise.
Labels: His Dark Tomb
He hid in the shelter of a rocky outcropping for awhile, savoring the noise of the wind whipping over his head and thankfully not through the fabric of his parka. He tracked the sun passing over head with his hand as it hugged the southern horizon far too much for his liking. Placing his hand beneath it he estimated he had little more than 2 or 3 hours of sunlight at best.
So before long he was forced to get up and orient himself toward town. The trek wasn't especially hard, but he had to be vigilant about his tracks. He solved this by creating false starts, walking backwards in his tracks and purposefully going in circles. He knew that his pursuers weren't especially bright (no one in the dismal little township seemed to be), but they had tracked enough game in their lives to find him easily enough if he didn't at least try.
When he began to see the first curls of smoke beyond the trees he slowed his pace and tried to be as quiet as possible. Slipping into town in the dead of winter was easy enough. The cold saw to that. He played hide and seek with windows while working his way toward the center of town.
He located the pub and upon seeing his snowshoes missing, abandoned the thought of returning inside for his pack. There was a great deal of noise inside, shouts and the sound of breaking things. But that was immaterial.
There was a close call when a local, Weyland-Something came stumbling around the corner of the building and nearly saw him. But whiskey had dimmed his eyes. Maxwell knew that he was tempting fate just by being present. So he abandoned his plans and returned to his tent with the full intent of gathering up what little he could and escaping into the night.
It took the remainder of the day, largely due to him being extra vigilant about where he stepped and whether or not it'd aid Finnis' gang. By the time he reached his campsite the last little sliver of light had evaporated and a whipping wind drove icy nails into his face.
He found it under siege, his camp stove lit and a thin curl of smoke stretching from its stack.
Producing his pistol he creeped closer, the butt of the gun was cold and heavy. Too heavy after his day of misadventure. He found the creeping too easy and he wondered as he pulled up to the canvas fabric how many times he had been watched in just this manner.
"This isn't his campsite," a man remarked from the inside, startlingly close. His shadow moved against the canvas. He was searching through Maxwell's personal items. "He wouldn't have set up so close to town."
"You so sure?" Another person, a woman spoke with a hint of annoyance.
"Yes, I'm sure. He's not a local, but he might as well be. They need his brains. If he didn't set their broken arms and put band-aids on their little scrapes they'd all die of dysentery in a week. They need Samuel. He'd be staying at the Inn if he was this close to town.
Also, the guy doesn't have Sam's handwriting."
They had short clipped accents. Southerners like himself, but there was something strange about the man's voice. He had a ramrod way of talking, intelligent but disciplined. Definitely military, Maxwell thought to himself as his gun suddenly didn't feel so heavy.
"Think he'll be back before we leave? It's dark out already. We should have made camp hours ago," The woman asked, her silhouette playing against the canvas. "Maybe we should leave a note and some money. For the wood."
Maxwell still squatted in the snow, breathing heavy. They didn't seem unfriendly, but he wasn't exactly in the mood to take chances. Especially with military types. He had met enough of those on his journey up north to last a life time. With the collapse of the empire after the emperor's untimely demise, military folk weren't exactly his first choice as allies. He thought the lot of them to be gun nuts and a touch too brutal.
"Think he'd miss one of these books?"
He could hear the flipping of pages. He was being looted.
"Yes, Aeolus. I'm sure he'd miss them."
The woman said, her voice getting further away. Maxwell could hear her sigh outside the tent opposite to him. She walked some distance away.
"I'm taking one anyway," the man known as Aeolus said in a mumble before rejoining her. Maxwell carefully readjusted himself and looked around the the edge of his tent and saw the two armor clad figures. They were talking, but he couldn't quite make out all of what they were saying.
But he could make at least one word out, carried by the wind to his ears by sheer chance.
She said the word that had plagued his dreams and nightmares for years. She said the name of the mythical beast which he sought. She said it clearly. Nidhoggr.
Labels: His Dark Tomb
The walk out of town into the woods was a long and quiet one. Maxwell had a lot of time to reflect on his fate. His pistol, the only security blanket he had in those far northern reaches sat completely useless in his parka pocket, not even drawn. He had simply complied with their demands and submitted. Truth be told he had never even fired it before.
He cursed himself for his cowardice as the man with an undertaker's face jabbed him in the back with a walking stick. His name was Finnis Growling, a frequent pub patron and fairly irate imperial denialist. It seemed everyone was in those days. But Finnis had a bigger bone to pick.
A big part of town saw their encounter, brief and anti climatic. There was a short scuffle and a yelp as one of the man's lackeys twisted one of his arms in the wrong direction. Everyone knew what was happening.
No one cared.
"Why are you doing this?" Maxwell rallied his courage and years as a debate champion.
"It's not personal, boy. But folks like you have to learn to mind your own business and stay out of our town."
Finnis rumbled, breathing heavy from the hike. The sun was high above, but it offered little warmth.
"Folks like me," he began innocently enough. "We don't even stay in town. I'm just here passing through. If you'd let me go I'll pack up my things and be on my way."
Finnis stopped and ran his fingers through his thinning hair. His two lackeys took the hint and seized Maxwell again.
"So you could do what? Take your little books and your maps and go looking for God knows what? Boy, I know you mean well. But your work ain't appreciated in these parts. We like things just the way they are. He stays in his world. We stay in ours. My daddy and his daddy worked hard to make it that way and I'll be damned if I'm going to let you change that. You army boys are always meddling with things beyond you."
God? Army boys? Maxwell found their monotheism and irrationality fascinating, even as Finnis produced a switch blade. It opened with a flick and the metal caught the sun in all the wrong ways.
"Hey. Listen. I'm sorry." He said, not fully understanding what was being said. "I didn't know. I was wrong."
A whisper of panic was surging through his voice.
"Hold 'em."
The hands on him felt like meat clad iron. Maxwell struggled violently. He knew what was coming and it felt wrong. It couldn't end like this. He wasn't supposed to wind up a frozen corpse in the hinterlands. He was supposed to be a hero.
He managed to free an arm. He jammed it in his pocket and clutched the one thing that could save him. He squeezed blindly.
A shot rang out. Finnis staggered back, dropping the switchblade. A pool of red began to spread around a smoking hole in the man's parka. They say the gut was the worst place for a man to be shot. He thought about it as that fact dawned on the undertaker faced man.
He struggled with his captors and fired off another shot wildly. It wasn't too difficult to break from their stunned grasp. Maxwell fired off another shot. Both missed.
Finnis clutched at the wet hole that had been drilled into him and let out a sob.
"Get him!" He yelled weakly, thick ooze seeping through his fingers. His lackeys were probably farm boys or manual laborers, but they gave chase when Maxwell booked it.
He didn't know where he was going. But that didn't matter. The pistol only had five more bullets in it and he wasn't about to waste anymore. His snowshoes had been abandoned at the pub, but the drifts were blissfully shallow and the trees thick enough to provide support.
He was a slight man, wiry and light. It didn't take him too long to out pace the lumbering hillbillies which pursued him. But he continued to run. He ran until his legs gave out beneath him and he sucked down the bitter cold winter air like a marathon runner until he choked and coughed.
After collapsing in what would have been a lovely summer meadow his body refused to get up and continue. As he laid there slick with sweat and his heart pounding he couldn't help but laugh. The idiots had forgotten to search him for weapons. Was he that unassuming and meek? Or where they really that dim? He couldn't help himself in being giddy. Now Finnis would pay the price. He felt a glimmer of guilt, but it was survival of the fittest.
After his bout of laughter subsided with his wit and strength returning he stumbled upright and continued on. It was hard not to dwell on the loss of his journals and the texts he had paid good money for. But it was certainly not wise to return to his former campsite, especially after shooting a local.
Justified xenophobia would probably be his undoing.
He strained to remember his maps, safely nestled in his pack at the pub. Along with his supplies and food. Using the sun as a compass as his father taught him, he tried his best to figure out a route to the road that cut through town.
It was impossible to live in the hinterlands without some basic tools. He'd be dead before the end of the night if he didn't have shelter or a fire. Through his own best judgement, Maxwell knew he had to return to town. Whether he stole, borrowed or traded for what he needed didn't matter. He needed to leave immediately. But he couldn't without a thin rope connecting him to civilization. Even one as dirty and primitive as the town of Early Wind.
Labels: His Dark Tomb
Total night came long before Maxwell made it home. His makeshift camp was spartan and a mess, but it was comfortable enough. It sustained his research and his body, barely. But that was all that was required.
He started a fire in his tiny wood stove after discarding his parcel on his unmade cot. It took too long for him to get feeling back into his fingers. It always took too long.
While he flexed his fingers in front of the warming iron he thought of the terrible series of events that brought him to this god forsaken wasteland. How he had been abandoned by his peers and everyone he had ever cared about because of his crazy theories. Maxwell was a stubborn man, but he didn't dare question their logic. He knew he was on the cusp of madness. But he was confident he could walk the tight rope without faltering.
The hinterlands, an associated amalgam of states further to the north than his liking were different. Still officially part of greater Isyr, they operated more like micro countries. Here survival outclassed the pursuit of knowledge. It bred a different type of human, one wired for conquest and manipulation.
But she had what he wanted. He didn't need to respect her for that. The only lubrication their relationship needed was gold.
After what seemed like an eternity he relaxed at what would pass for a desk and unwrapped the book. Immediately it's smell assaulted him through the cold air. It had the wonderful stink of home, of his study. Of old paper and aged leather.
He consumed the book, paying close attention to the cliff notes in the margins he had assumed the previous reader had left in indelible red ink. Often the notes were far more interesting than the actual content which it critiqued. He still had no idea who this person was, but presumably it was a woman from the looks of it. She was intelligent and her grammar was superb, so it definitely wasn't a local.
He thought it was fairly irresponsible to deface such a magnificently old tome, but he had been numbed and had grown to expect such things in these parts.
But he forgave her and instead saw a small glimmer of admiration sprout in his mind.
The next day he awoke, dressed and cleaned his pistol carefully. After jamming it into a pocket he strapped on his snowshoes and made the long journey to town. He stopped several times to cover his tracks the best he could, but a careful observer would have been able to trace his route. Maxwell knew this, but instead drew comfort from the fact that he would soon leave this miserable place.
He shopped and resupplied himself, grateful that the locals no longer found it necessary to refer to him as Stranger in their every day discussions. Brainiac was a little better, but the sting of anti-intellectualism hurt.
It was during a quick lunch at the town's local pub that he was confronted by a man he had seen little of.
"Maxie," he started as he took a seat next to him at the bar. "You don't look so good. Maybe you shouldn't be walking all over creation for a change."
Maxwell focused on his sandwich, but managed to speak through mouthfuls of braised beef.
"I'll take that into consideration, friend."
"I'm not your friend, guy. I just think that maybe you shouldn't be trespassing. There are dangerous folks around these parts. Some of them with itchy trigger fingers."
Maxwell turned and examined the man. He had a face of an undertaker and breath that stank of booze normally. His name was Fennis-Something. He was cleaned up and his odor was only mildly disgusting.
"Like you?" Maxwell inquired, discarding his sandwich on his plate. He tried so hard to be tough, but routinely failed miserably.
The man with an undertaker's face laughed and stole his pickle.
"Like your friend Mary Ann, for one." He said with a wink and an unnecessary nudge.
The walls of the stinking pub immediately closed in on him. Suddenly he felt too hot, too confined. How did this man know about Mary Ann? She was a dangerous secret, one that could get him killed in these parts.
"I don't know no Mary Ann."
His poor grammar came off as artificial. Finnis-Something noticed and moved in closer.
"Me thinks you do, boy. But I'm no one to judge. Maybe if she wouldn't run her mouth so much I wouldn't even know you were squatting out there in the woods doing God knows what with her. I'm just saying, be careful of who you talk to. And be doubly careful who you stick your dick in."
He adjusted his glasses and pushed his meal away. The thought disgusted him.
"I'm a gentleman."
"Sure you are. But she thinks you're one nasty character. Why don't you and me go outside for a smoke, talk private like?"
Maxwell paid for his half eaten meal, wary but interested in what Finnis-Something had to say about Mary Ann and her running mouth.
But that discussion never happened. Once outside Maxwell found himself being escorted away from town by several very unfriendly townsfolk, trailed by the undertaker faced man.
Labels: His Dark Tomb
Maxwell checked his pistol for a sixth time and felt its comforting cold weight in his hand as his eyes scanned the desolate treeline around him. The sun was spilling its guts like a stuck pig, painting everything the color of red gore. Mary Ann was running late and he could feel his innards twisting themselves into all kinds of knots. He was an imaginative man and he wondered at all the spectacularly bad ways the evening could end.
In another life he had been a wonderful writer, but not now.
Now he was all washed up and freezing cold. He was reduced to waiting in the middle of nowhere for a woman he barely knew beyond her first name and a solitary promise. Nidhoggr.
He paced nervously and jammed the pistol into his jacket pocket. Producing a stubby, half consumed cigar he lit it and puffed quietly, the bitter smoke barely offering any warmth in the middle of such desolation. But it offered him a narrow bridge to reality, something he left behind months prior when he left the tropics.
Maxwell by nature was a skeptical man born of educated parents. But the prospect that Mary Ann had offered him was one he couldn't refuse. He had spent the better parts of his career tracking down the mythos surrounding the enigmatic serpent which he thought dwelt solely in the mind of the Norse and their conquered peoples. He had gained tantalizing and horrific details about the creature, a taste that it might not be as fictional as he had once believed.
Unable to enjoy it, he cast the cigar into a snowbank and reproduced his pistol. The strange woman was just coming into view from beneath the dying sun. She moved surprisingly fast in her snowshoes. He started off and met her halfway beneath a dead spruce.
"You're late," he started. His voice cracked from disuse. "If I had known you weren't serious I wouldn't have left town."
Mary Ann smiled widely, her thin face creasing into far too many lines for his liking. She was an ugly woman, his father would have said she was from older, out of date stock. But his benign type of racism died with the emperor a decade prior.
"Late? Oh, Maxie. You don't even know the half of it. It's pretty hard to make sure you're not being followed if you leave a track every time you break wind for heaven's sake."
He stared at her with a deadpan expression, deciphering her odd accent. The reflection from the sunset made it impossible for her to see his eyes. But she knew there wasn't much behind his thick glasses.
She eyed his pistol, an antique creation from another era. But it was still imposing. Obsolete or not, it could still ruin her day.
"Is this a stickup?"
Maxwell grimaced and put it away.
"Bears," he muttered. "I hate bears."
They both knew he wasn't a very good liar. He had brought it expressly for her, if she disappointed him or otherwise tried to take advantage of his delicate situation. He didn't like being a bully. He wasn't a macho man by any means. But the north produced another breed of man and Maxwell would rather be damned than lose out to a bunch of inbred, illiterate hillbillies. Not now. Not at this crucial point in his life.
Mary Ann produced the package from beneath her filthy parka. It was wrapped in butcher's paper and twine. Maxwell took it and felt its impressive weight in his hands. He had waited so long, it felt like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
He secured it beneath an arm and produced his side of the bargain, hard gold coin. The finest currency in all of creation. She took the purse and removed a coin. Biting it with yellowed teeth she grinned.
"Tasty," she said at last.
"I'm going to need more next week. I'm planning on leaving soon. I don't want to be left with half the story before I leave town. Don't repeat the kind of mistakes that cost me my guide last time, or you'll have lost yourself a customer."
He pulled up the hood on his parka and jammed his hand into a pocket, petting the firm weight of his pistol. The wind was just beginning to whip up.
She just offered a sarcastic salute and left in the direction from which she came. Maxwell stayed for quite sometime, watching her leave. When he felt he was once again alone he too left. He had much to study and very little time to do it.
Labels: His Dark Tomb
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