Chapter 7: Fear

Pelam had spent the night sleeping in the dark spruce forest overlooking the still smoldering remains of Cloverheart. Lying on a hard bed of needles and covered with a hastily collected blanket of large ferns, he had agonized over the events of the day until he eventually dozed off. Mercifully, he had been submerged in nightmares that, for once, were less painful than the real world outside.

Sleep had been light and restless. More than once, the acrid smoke drifting up into the forest from his village had tickled his nostrils and reminded his subconscious of the charred corpses of his family still lying among the ashes below, unburied and left to the mercy of the scavengers of the wild. He could hear the black ravens caw as they circled above, eager to begin their feast.

In the morning, he had picked berries for breakfast and washed himself in a nearby stream, cleaning off the worst of the soot and blood from his sweaty skin. While still dirty and unkempt, he now looked just like any other poor farmer from the River Plains. But he would no longer stand out in a crowd as the sole surviving victim of yesterday’s massacre.

Now he was walking along the small dirt road leading away from Cloverheart, toward Bulrush, Riverwaist, and eventually Terynia itself. It was still early summer, and the sun shone brightly from a mostly blue sky. The path he took was well-kept, but narrow. It snaked across the landscape between low hills and shallow lakes, cutting through the deep spruce and birch forests between the rivers, and across flowering fields and meadows.

Walking slowly along the side of the road, he eventually entered an opening in the forest, where the trees gave way to cultivated land. To his right, there was a large field of rapeseed growing, its flowers covering the ground in a thick blanket, as yellow as the softest spread of butter. Separating the pasture from the road was a low fieldstone wall, partly overgrown with thistles and poppies. Among them, butterflies—tortoiseshells, peacocks, and browns—fluttered from flower to bright flower, eager to fill their starving bellies with nectar.

The stones of the wall were old and rough, covered in gray and yellow lichens, and seemed more heaped in a long line along the path to get rid of them than placed there carefully for decoration. A fieldfare was perched on top of one, twitching its head about with sharp, nervous jerks as it looked for edible morsels crawling between the rocks. The air smelled of summer and warmth.

From around the bend in the road ahead of him came voices.

He had been walking deep in his own thoughts, and at first he didn’t notice the men approaching. But when they stepped out from the forest beyond and into the sunlit clearing, their red-and-white uniforms caught his attention.

They were soldiers. Soldiers from the Imperial army.

As he neared them, he looked down at the ground, hoping his unruly red hair would shield his face from the eyes of the approaching squad. If any of the spirits of the forest had heard his vow last night… No, with Mardocar as the patron god of the Empire, Pelam could not afford to believe he was safe in the presence of its soldiers.

“Hey, son!”

The voice calling out to him was bright and strong, with a tone that sounded more curious than accusatory.

Pelam didn’t reply. He continued walking past the small group, perhaps ten or twelve men in total, pretending not to hear them.

“Are you deaf, boy?” one of the other soldiers shouted at him. There was a snickering sound from some of the men in the group.

Pelam was walking right beside the squad, in the opposite direction. The soldier at the front of the group, who had first called for his attention, was now behind him. Just a few seconds more, and they would all be gone…

“I’m talking to you, son!”

This time, the voice was more authoritative, though still without malice. But it was clear the man calling for him would not let him go without talking to him first. Trying to run now would only compound his troubles.

Reluctantly, Pelam stopped and turned around to face the Imperial soldier. From the look of the rank insignia on his uniform, he appeared to be a garrison commander. The man was tall and seemingly well-trained, with strong muscles and a bearing suggesting he took pride in his service to the Emperor.

“Excuse me, sir,” Pelam said at last, trying his best to look both confused and unthreatening. “I was thinking about something. I didn’t hear you.”

It was a weak excuse, but the soldier seemed to accept it. After a short pause, the man began his makeshift interrogation of Pelam.

“Are you from Cloverheart, son?” he asked. “Do you know what happened there?”

Then, with less demand in his voice, he continued, “Are you alright?”

Despite the commander’s seemingly sincere interest in his well-being, fear gripped Pelam’s heart again—fear that he was about to be tied to the events in his village and arrested on charges of defying the gods. For all he knew, their servants could be actively hunting him now for his rebellion. He was deeply glad he hadn’t stayed to bury his family.

“No, sir,” he replied, his denial coming perhaps a bit too quickly. “No, I’m from Sweetsoil, sir. Just walking to Bulrush to visit the market there.”

“But this is the road to Cloverheart. You must have seen the village when you walked past it, yes? The Emperor’s guard in Bulrush saw smoke on the horizon and sent us down the road to investigate. Do you know what happened there?”

Caught in his lie, Pelam quickly had to come up with a story that didn’t contradict what he’d already told the soldier. Of course, it didn’t make much sense that he could have walked past an entire village burned to the ground without noticing it.

“Yes, sir,” he explained to the commander. “I saw smoke, but didn’t stop to look into it. I was afraid there might be raiders or bandits still around, so I rushed past it as quickly as I could.”

The soldier nodded, but said nothing, as if he felt Pelam was little more than a peasant and shouldn’t be expected to know anything useful.

“Continue, then,” he said, finishing the conversation. “And stay safe on the road. Glory be to the Lion and the gods!”

“Glory to the Lion,” Pelam echoed without much enthusiasm, unable to force himself to even pretend to praise the gods of the world.

He spent the rest of the day walking along the road, but the encounter with the Imperial soldiers had shaken his confidence and made him realize the perilous nature of his self-imposed mission. Dangers would approach him from every direction now. Not just from the gods or from the lesser spirits, but also from the men and women who served them.

Pelam walked past a couple of smaller villages along the way, but did not enter any of them. As he approached Bulrush, he started to get apprehensive. Not only was there an Imperial presence there, along with shrines to the gods, but also people who might recognize him by sight.

Uncertain about the right course of action, he eventually decided to leave the road entirely and make his own path through the forests and fields, away from the prying eyes of soldiers and other travelers. It would soon be evening, and before sunset he’d have to enter the wilds to make a shelter for himself anyway. There was no reason to wait until dark.

Living off the land came naturally to Pelam. He was a hunter, and the son of a hunter. A few snares tied to a stick, raised against the thick, gray stem of an old pine, made a good squirrel trap. And if that failed, there were fish in the streams, edible leaves on the forest floor, and roots to be foraged from the ground. He would not go hungry.

This second evening of his private rebellion against the gods, he took the time to build a proper shelter. A sturdy log raised against the side of a small cliff made a decent ridgepole, and against it he stacked fresh spruce branches, covered with a thick layer of fern cuttings. The rock behind his shelter would reflect the heat of his fire and keep him warm during the night.

The next day, his journey took him across the verdant meadows of the River Plains, through sunlit birch forests and across clear streams. With all the natural beauty surrounding him, it was all too easy to believe he was now out of harm’s reach.

But the forests of Taeron were not the domain of man. They were not to be tread lightly.

The land was rich in game, with moose and giant deer grazing among the old trees. With the abundance of herbivores came predators—wolves, trolls, bears, and cats. But these were just animals. If you understood them, and respected them, they posed little danger to the experienced woodsman. They might stalk you if they were hungry, or charge you to defend their young or their territory, but they would do so only out of need and not out of malice.

His father had taught him to read the signs of the wildlife surrounding him since he was a small boy. If the dire wolf growled like this, or the rock troll swung its club like that, it meant they were upset with your presence and wanted you to retreat. When you respected the creatures of the natural world, you could predict their behavior. Such encounters, while exciting and a little bit scary, usually ended with both parties leaving in peace.

Unless, of course, you were hunting the animals, in which case you obviously played by a completely different set of rules.

No, the real danger of the countryside were the spirits that dwelled there.

As a child, he hadn’t known to fear them yet. Or at least, he hadn’t understood enough to do so properly. But as a teenager, he had learned what every man who had to go into the wild must know: stay away from the spirits.

With their eyes set on the hearts of man, they were the true predators here—the lesser gods, the spirits of the meadows, the lakes, the hills, and the mountains.

More than one farmer from these parts of the Empire had walked into the deep forests, never to be heard from again. It was not uncommon to find rotting bodies washed up on shores or weathered bones at the bottom of ravines, the remains of men who had fallen prey to the temptations of the spirits of the wild, listening to their whispered pleas for them to go drown themselves or throw themselves off a cliff. Or worse, go home to their families and slit the throats of their loved ones in the middle of the night, while they were asleep.

Yet, the people living in this land had no choice. If they wanted to survive out here, they couldn’t do so without the wood from the forest, the fish from the lakes, or the meat from the hunt. They couldn’t break new ground for fields or homesteads without working among the trees. If you lived here, you had to learn to deal with the spirits, whether you wanted to or not.

And so, after his childhood incident in their barn, his mother had taught Pelam the most important lesson of all: whatever you do, never, ever invite the spirits in.

He wished she had listened to her own advice. Instead, she had done what people here had done as long as anyone could remember. She had prayed to the gods of the world and asked them to come, thinking—like people always did—that this time nothing bad would happen, that they were somehow immune from the evil of the gods of the world.

But despite his fear and apprehension, as the days went by, Pelam’s journey progressed without incident. The dark shadow that suddenly disappeared into the dense undergrowth with a shrieking sound was probably nothing more than a wild boar, frightened and fleeing as he approached. And the soft voice that seemed to whisper to him from out among the waves as he walked along the sandy shore of a small, reed-filled lake was probably just that—waves.

Still, he couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that there were eyes out there, watching him with malevolent intelligence from among the trees and the hills. Eyes, filled with malice and hatred, ready to pounce on his soul the moment he gave them an opening.

Author's Note

Thank you for reading Echoes of Fallen Gods!

This novel is 43 chapters long, with new installments posted twice each week. Perhaps you’d be interested in reading some of my other stories while you wait for the next update?

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