The Fire and the Fog (18 page)

Then around the edges, in the shadows between
the tall stalks of wheat, behind bushes or boulders, he would add
shadows, brown and black, barely visible. You would have to
concentrate to see them, they would be so well hidden. An arm here,
a cowl-covered face there, the shadows would be nearly invisible.
But when you found them, the full image would unveil. The dull
glint of a sword, the sharp arc of a taught bowstring would
illuminate the shadows, and you would be able to see the men in the
shadows standing quickly and feathering the sharp, proud church
soldiers with arrows, running through with their dull grey swords,
and then disappearing in the shadows again. Through the alcohol he
saw it all, just as he had with the three women, and he knew he
could have painted it. He knew he could have painted it so that
anyone who looked at the painting would see his story, an entire
story captured in the blink of an eye. He could have done it.

But he wouldn’t. He tossed his empty wineskin
to his side as the soldiers passed him, and he looked at his hands;
he watched them shake slightly, and stared at his slowly yellowing
fingertips. He had seen this happen before; he had watched his
father die of too much wine, and he knew that, slowly, he would die
too. But that wouldn’t matter. Once he was dead, he would be at
peace, and he would finally be welcomed into the flaming arms of
Rohc the Forgiver, his sins burnt away before being handed, naked
and clean, to Phrae, to Death herself.

Rohc and Phrae would have to wait though;
Shahn, life, still held onto him. He would let the alcohol consume
him, he had no choice now, but he wouldn’t let the guards find him.
The group had finally passed him, their jingling was now thirty odd
paces further down the street; they had not recognized him. It had
happened a few times before to Dan’r since he had been stranded on
these shores. Anytime someone saw him work his Art they tended to
describe him, well, wrong. Two to three feet taller than he really
was, robed all in black, rather than the dirty grey and brown he
wore, his face indistinguishable from the shadow behind it. It
seemed the thugs from earlier had been no different. It surprised
him, sometimes, the lack of attention to detail people paid when
panicked or surprised. But he made use of it.

There were even stories popping up about him,
legends; the dark wanderer, calling down strange magicks to protect
the weak and innocent. The stories had been spreading like wildfire
through inns and taverns. Dan’r had even heard of mothers telling
the stories to their children. It was another problem with the lack
of taverns, Dan’r thought as he shook his head, trying to clear his
eyes and mind from the fog that seemed to float over them
perpetually now. People in taverns always told stories, and Dan’r
loved hearing the stories of him. For some reason he enjoyed being
seen as a gallant stranger, cloaked in shadows and justice, rather
than the drunk he was.

‘I wonder what they’ll say I did this time’,
he thought to himself as he started to stand, pulling another
wineskin from his cloak. He was running out, he felt his thumb
lightly brushing the papers in his cloak pockets, the years of
practice brushing aside the fog of alcohol for so familiar an
action. Maybe he would have saved a poor family from a gang of
thieves this time, or stopped a group of would-be ravishers from
stealing a young girl’s virtue.

Whatever deeds storytellers invented for him,
however distorted and twisted Dan’r’s activities became after each
telling, he was always a tall, strong, gentle knight, robed in
black, who melted into the shadows and disappeared after his good
deed, never asking for compensation or recompense. He meted out
justice, and then disappeared, protecting the innocent and poor
wherever he went. In the stories he was a noble warrior, a knight,
a saint. Never a drunk.

He smiled slightly as he stumbled through the
streets, following the direction the patrol of soldiers had gone
before him. He swerved as he walked, lurching whenever he lifted
his wineskin to his lips. Adrenaline from the fight gone, his
drunkenness shone through. He was too preoccupied with his
inebriated self congratulations to notice passersby who sniffed and
skirted around him as he passed; he completely missed the looks of
disgust, the cries of beratement when he stumbled into a passing
pregnant woman, knocking her and her scant groceries to the dirty
streets.

Dan’r simply stumbled down the road, quickly
losing himself in the crowd, his mind focused as only the mind of a
frequent drunk can be. He no longer paid attention to the growing
crowds in Wraegn. He had been in the city for two months this time,
and the number of
dishevelled
refugees
had been climbing steadily in the past weeks. More people in the
streets meant more beggars in the alleys, more ruffians in the
taverns. Dan’r didn’t care why they were there.

He paid no attention to the crowds around him
or the soldiers on the street behind him as he stood at looked
finally at his destination. He had only been here once since he
arrived in the city, in a moment of desperation. The one place in
the city to buy painting supplies, he had promised himself after
his first trip he would not come back, that he would sober up for a
day and make his own. But he had run out of time.

It was horrible really, Dan’r thought as he
walked up the two stone steps and opened the shops glass-paned
door, a tiny brass bell announcing his presence as he stepped in.
The front window of the shop showed large metal buckets of paint
and large, wide, crudely bristled brushes. It was a paint store,
but paint for the crude and often garishly coloured houses that the
people of Rognia preferred for some reason.

Dan’r had his own brushes of course, real
painting was impossible with the monstrosities the people of Rognia
called brushes, but he would need their paint. There had been a
time, back in Alta, and even during the beginning of his stay in
Dohm, when he had done everything himself. He could vaguely
remember stretching his own canvas and hand-crafting brushes
specifically to the paintings he would use them for, discarding
them after. He could almost recall harvesting and mixing the
various pigments and oils to make his own paints, in the colours he
needed, combining them to create all the rainbow had to offer and
more.

Now he simply bought what was available, and
if his paintings came out either dull and splotchy or too vibrant,
the colours screaming in protest on his medium; if his Art came out
dull, sour, and overpowered, well, Dan’r didn’t care. His paintings
had lost their life, just as he had, so what did it matter. The
money was spendable, and the wine was drinkable, and that was
enough.

‘Ey!’ Dan’r’s concentration, his inner
monologue, was broken by a short, stocky man in a heavily
paint-stained apron yelling and waving an arm impatiently in
Dan’r’s face. ‘What do you want?’ the short man said, putting his
hands palm down on the paint-speckled wooden counter, rolling his
shoulders and looking up, staring Dan’r in the face.

‘I need some paint’ Dan’r said as he moved to
the left side of the counter. The front of the store was small, and
the counter cut it in half width wise. The front entrance to the
store was on the right, the store window and a large book on the
left. It was to the book on the counter that Dan’r stepped, and
began to open. Inside were sheets of paper, stained with different
colours, that Dan’r would order from, or would have, but the
shopkeep spoke before Dan’r could start listing what he needed.

‘Too bad mate.’ The short man said, cocking
his head back and to the side as Dan’r turned to face him.

‘What do you mean?’ Dan’r started, but the
shopkeeper starting shaking his head slowly, still looking Dan’r in
the eye.

‘I don’t sell to drunks, or to people who
huff paint, and you look like both.’

‘Look, shorty,’ Dan’r started, leaning
forward and putting his hands on the counter as well, matching the
shorter man stare for stare, ‘my money’s good, so you’re gonna sell
to me.’ This was going wrong already. Dan’r couldn’t fight the
shopkeeper, he hadn’t done anything wrong, but Dan’r needed the
paint.

‘That’s too bad,’ the shopkeeper replied,
sliding one hand under the countertop, ‘now get out before I call
the guard.’ He continued, pulling out a large wooden club from
under the counter and placing it with a thud on the countertop.

‘Look,’ Dan’r said, reaching into his cloak
for coin to mollify the man, but he was stopped before he could
make it to the papers he was grabbing for.

‘Stop there, drunk,’ the shopkeep said,
picking up the club from the countertop and pointing it towards
Dan’r, ‘get your hand out of your cloak, and get out of my
shoppe.’

‘I just need some paint’

‘And I don’t care what you need, I need you
to leave.’

‘Look, threaten me all you want, I’m not
leaving without some paint.’

‘Yeah, we’ll see about that,’ the shopkeeper
said, glancing quickly towards the door of the shop, just as Dan’r
heard the bell on the front door jingle its slow warning.

Dan’r turned his head slightly, looking away
from the short shopkeeper and his club, in time to watch four
heavily plate-armoured soldiers walk into the store. The one at the
front had the red feather on the crest of his helm that signified a
guard sergeant, and a longsword gleamed brilliantly at his waist.
The other three soldiers carried rifles, and Dan’r could see six
more identically armed and armoured soldiers standing at attention
outside the store. The sergeant looked at Dan’r as he spoke, one
hand nonchalantly on his sword as he spoke.

‘Is there a problem here, Goah?’

‘No, Sergeant,’ the shopkeeper replied, ‘this
drunk here was just leaving, wasn’t he?’ he asked Dan’r pointedly,
still leaning against the counter, the club still in one hand.

‘He’ll be leaving with us, Goah,’ the
Sergeant replied, his eyes still fixed on Dan’r, ‘we have some
questions for him.’

Dan’r’s hand was still inside his cloak,
thumbing paper as the guard and the shopkeeper talked. His mind was
churning, trying to swim through the fog as he thought. He didn’t
like what he was going to do; he wasn’t sure if it would work. But
he had no choice. His heart was pumping, his adrenaline flowing,
and his drunkenness diminishing.

Without a word, with no indication to alert
the soldiers he might try something, Dan’r turned, whipped a paper
out with his right hand, braced his right with his left, and
jumped. The soldier was starting to move, his sword an inch out of
its scabbard, when Dan’r pushed. He pushed hard against the
counter, and the counter didn’t move. But he did. As usual when
Dan’r pushed, there was no sound, no smell, just the slight
afterimage of a breeze in the air, and the feeling of intense
pressure against Dan’r’s arms and front.

Dan’r flew back and crashed into the glass
window of the store, the glass and metal of the window panes
shattering and straining as his back hit them. But the window
broke, and Dan’r flew through. He landed on the street outside the
shop, rolling head-over-heels backwards through the shattered metal
and broken glass. His roll ended with him on his feet, and his feet
were already pumping against his momentum, against the glass and
cobblestone street, as he set off at a run. He was away, barreling
through the crowds, before the soldiers waiting outside the store
could do anything, before the sergeant inside could make it out
through the door, and by then it was too late. They would never
catch him in their heavy hide and plate armour, and they couldn’t
shoot at him on such a crowded street.

Dan’r ran through the main street for a time,
darting through the crowd and listening for the telltale jingle of
church armour as he ran, but he slowed as he reached the north end
of town and still heard nothing. There were two main roads leading
out from Wraegn, one to the north and one to the east, and Dan’r
already knew he would go north. To the north lay areas less
dominated by the church, and eventually the wooden country of
Heyle. The town West would be good to him, it always had before,
and there was a brewer there who made several particularly fine
types of ale, sweetened with honey and nuts from the tall trees
surrounding the town. At least he would go to West if the fog had
not yet reached it. Dan’r would have to check on the location of
the fog soon; it had been over a week since he had last cared
enough to.

The fog tickled something in the back of
Dan’r’s mind, as it always did, but other thoughts overpowered it.
The fog was interesting, a curiosity, something that maybe he
should have liked to paint. But in the grand scheme of things, it
didn’t matter at all.

Still, even if the killer fog was creeping
slowly over the north-west of Dohm, that wouldn’t stop Dan’r from
going north. Sure, the north road from Wraegn led closer to the
fog, but the Eastern road led further into Dohm, and most of the
side of the road was being excavated and patrolled by church
soldiers. Dan’r had heard that they were building a new railroad,
supposed to be the longest ever. Then he had lost interest and
stopped paying attention to the conversation in the tavern, and had
gone back to his beer. What they were building didn’t matter. The
road was patrolled, and was therefore as good as closed.

Dan’r kept moving slowly as he walked past
the last houses of the town. There were no guards posted, it would
be pointless. Wraegn had no walls, and therefore no real way to
keep people inside or out. But he still had to be cautious. He
almost remembered an old proverb, something about the first time
you didn’t check being the last time, but his mind failed to grasp
it, and he wandered on, alone. He kept listening for the jingling
trot of the church soldiers, kept looking back for a red-feathered
helm waving in the air as it marched towards him quickly, but there
was none. The church soldiers must believe he was still in the
city. Dan’r thought he might have escaped.