Ithacles (ogreslayer) wrote in adusta, @ 2009-07-13 01:42:00 |
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Entry tags: | ithacles, vedette uthral |
Sunset and the Bells (Vedette)
It was a crisp day, but that was almost every day in Faustben. The air was calm and cool despite the bright sun of late summer. And the air was clear as the church bells which tolled the late afternoon hour. Sound carried well there, in the valley of Faustben's great peaks. The church could have been a mile away and still every woman and child would have known the time: six o'clock. The men wouldn't have heard it, though. They were elsewhere.
Little more than a year since the Breaking. Ithacles looked up from the parchment in his hands, scanning the painted sky. Yes, he was right. Just over a year. Another autumn was almost upon them, and Faustben's men were still scattered. To her borders and passes, guarding against those who would invade. Guiding those who sought shelter. A year was a long time to wait for some things: for a letter, for a verdict, for safe return.
A year was quick as a blink for others.
He felt as though it had all happened yesterday, and that he had stumbled through it in a dreamless stupor. One long tormented evening without sleep: plodding through the darkness, waiting for the misery to end. Or for it to end him.
He stared out over the land. From here, on the long grassy lawn stretched before the Falcon's Stone, one could see everything. Or so it seemed. The small tight buildings of the city with her ringed streets, the walls which cradled her in that great bowl of a valley, and the small dwellings out beyond. They dotted the gently rolling hillsides like pebbles, and then suddenly the forests began. Then came the peaks, those mountains so famous and treacherous. They were behemoth, and yet the majesty of their design could not be ignored. They broke the skyline with their great cragged shadows and white snowy tops, threatening to go beyond that blue blanket and out into whatever lay above.
If he stood there he could watch the shadows on the mountains move. Even the racing speed of a great cotton cloud looked slow and labored when compared to those enormous mountains. Yet the act of watching them, seeing the shadows move along peak and valley, made him feel as though he could reach them at will. As if he could simply mount his horse and be at the tops of those peaks in moments.
The bell tolled again. His head snapped up and back; he must have dozed off. On his feet even. The friars were summoning the poor and placeless. Nowadays that was nearly everyone. They'd give out soup and bread until the pots were nearly empty. Then they'd add water to the stock and continue. Then they'd start praying.
Ithacles held the parchment out before him once again. An estimate on how many had poured into Faustben's borders. How many mouths needed the fruit of her pantries. How many had already starved to death. How many were dying of the diseases spreading in refugee camps.
New sicknesses. They killed quickly and without any recognizable pattern. It was as if when Adusta had spat out her ash and hail that she had breathed out curses as well; escaping the avalanches and tremors was not enough. It seemed as though the world would come to claim them all, and it wanted souls to leave in waves.
He was walking now. Didn't remember leaving his place against a pillar, and didn't remember quite where it was he thought he was headed.
His feet moved beneath him. Over the lawns, crowded with its lean-tos and meager cook fires. He stepped over a dog, ribs showing beneath patchy red fur, but did not look up from his scroll. He didn't need to watch the crowds around him because the scroll was the crowd: he knew how many were starving. How many were left without fathers.
He was through them before he realized it. His eyes were sore and yet he could not look up from the scroll held within his hands. He needed to find a place to sit down, to rest. He needed to sleep; the dark green ink cut into the page swam and blurred.
Quite suddenly he hit something. Something hard and soft all at the same time, and something that had hit him just as hard. He dropped the scroll and jerked his head up. It was a woman, and he'd knocked her completely off her feet.
"Oh," was all he could muster. He was far too startled for anything else.