Under A Darkening Sky

[Isania Tannan]

1 Vhalar, 718

The caravan left her a trial clear of Bastard’s Grove with a waterskin, a smattering of rations, and a niggling sense of unease.

The grasslands sprawled to her right, twitching like a predator caught in a nightmare. The river they had followed for the last three days had vanished into it that morning, swallowed so cleanly that Isania could as well have juggled the stars as found it again.

Above her, a dozen ugly bruises mingled with the clouds and stained the sky purple-black, twisting light and wind and sound, speckling the planes with patches of shadow. Turned the midday sky from a familiar companion into something with teeth. Something hungry.

Wasn’t the most pleasant thought she’d had, all by her lonesome, it had to be admitted. The wind cut its way down the mountains, bought the breath of the Spine whispering down her neck. No other gale groaned like the Yaralon wind. She let out a breath.

Awful sudden, coming home wasn’t looking like so fine an idea as it had back in Rynmere.

The Fool’s Run they called it, which inspired about as much hope in her as the name merited. A murderous patch of grassland between Bastard's Grove and Yaralon proper that ate armies with the same cheerful disregard with which it swallowed individuals. So narrow on a map; scarce the space of three fingers. Plenty wide enough to be her grave, now that she was looking at it. She’d turned her back on Yaralon the best part of ten arcs ago, and there wasn’t a soul she’d known, before or since, that had chanced that grassland and lived to tell of it.

Looked properly welcoming from where she stood though, at the foothills of the Spines. Inviting as a poisoner’s smile. Solid, flat ground. Easier going than the foothills, where every stride’s progress on the flat came at the cost of three spent clambering over rocks. Better fuel. The grass burned with a hazy, greasy smoke that choked man and beast, but at least it burned. The Fates hadn’t yet made a rock that could set a campfire.

She hissed a curse at no-one and nothing, sent a stone skittering up the slope. Didn’t help any. Weren't the stone's fault that the fatal way was so attractive. She pulled her pack tighter and clambered after it. That was how the Fool’s Run dragged you in. Nice and pretty and calm, from a distance. More teeth than a tiger, once you got close enough to count them. If she veered off the mountains, was a fact something’d present her with that opportunity, sooner or late.

Say that much for the wilds, say they were consistent in how they killed you.

The foothills were slow going. Each step bought a trickle of loose rock or, as the day wore on and she clambered higher, stone that plunged up like a necromancer’s knives, sharp enough that she felt it through her boots. Was enough to make her long for the north, and the roads, and the steady clink of horseshoe on cobble. She drew a too-short swallow from her waterskin and wondered at when she had grown so soft.

Night came on quickly. The wind, an eager footman, followed in its wake, whipped the warmth from her sweat-stained tunic. The ground was rock, and about as likely to hold a tent as it was a flame. She cursed the wind, and the clouds, and her shivering, and dropped behind her pack. Not the shelter she might've picked, but a sight better than none at all. A spare set of clothes made a blanket.

Sleep was swift in coming.

[Isania Tannan]

3 Vhalar, 718

Thirst was a constant companion.

She had not drunk since that morning, a single sip as she rose. That had been her routine for three trials; water rationed by the motion of the sun across the sky. Her tongue was thick in her mouth.

Isania rationed as if it were the Immortals’ own blood, but for all that her waterskin seemed to grow lighter with each beat of her heart. Had a lot in common with her hopes, in that regard. Another trial, perhaps, before it was empty. Another trial spent praying for rain, before the choice was to descend into the grasslands or wither on the mountainside.

The clouds had thickened as she clambered toward the Cut and the northern passage. Thickened, and darkened, and stubbornly refused to yield a pattering of rain. She could taste the water in the air, like a remembered kiss, but damned if it was going to fall.

In Andaris, she’d seen a merchant who kept a serpent with a brass ring fixed about its neck, tight enough to stop it swallowing the rats he tossed it, no matter how it writhed. She’d left him a dozen coppers and moved on. She found herself feeling a sudden kinship with the reptile.

Wasn’t much for it but to keep moving and ignore the dread creeping down her spine. Ignore the growing sense that she’d made some awful mistake, and that the last thing she’d know would be the knife-sharp mountains and a cloud-choked sky.

She hadn’t seen an animal since she begun, nothing but the mountains and the stone, and the silent; hungry grasslands. A part of her wondered what would come for her bones if she died here. A dry laugh wriggled out of her throat, though, on reflection, there wasn't much worth cracking a smile over. If the mountain took her, could do what it pleased with her bones. Wouldn't matter to her none.

A step, and the next one. The miles wore on.

[Isania Tannan]

4 Vhalar, 718

The grass pressed close.

Wasn’t so difficult to imagine that she was drowning in it. Her world was the handspan of grass before her, pressing in on every side like an angry crowd. She inched forward, guided by the memory of a tree rising from the grasslands; glimpsed from the foothills.

If there was a tree there was water. Wasn’t the sort of plan to inspire confidence, she had to admit, but she was no sort of wildswoman, and some beginning had to be better than none at all.

The grasslands lived in perpetual twilight; light swallowed by taller strands, each of which was tall enough to leave a man on horseback as sightless as her.

It was day on the mountainside; but here it never crept past the dawn hours. The rain persisted in its stubborn refusal to fall, but the moisture had crept into the grasslands all the same, and each step left a line of precious water where her tunic touched the strands.

If the mountains were silent, the grasslands radiated life. Noise came from every direction, the clicking of insects, the creak and rustle of creatures unseen, burrowing through the undergrowth. The protest of grass beneath her boots.

Wasn’t peaceful, not by any measure, but was some shelter from the wind. She was grateful for that. Not grateful enough to peel her hand from the hilt of her sword, but grateful still.

Half a trial of slow, sweat-drenched progress, before she saw the branches rising over the grass. Half a trial of drumming fingers on her near-empty waterskin, of twitching at every noise in the grass, like a dog caught in a thunderstorm. Wasn't an understatement, to say that she was happier to see those branches then she’d ever been to see a friend’s face. She scrambled forward, parting the grass before her. A clearing came into view, dominated by a withered tree, branches splayed like broken bones.

Long dead.

Isania stared at it, mouth hanging open. A hollow beneath the roots. A patch of darkness that marked a burrow. Nothing else. A dip that might’ve, once, held water. Dry now. The dread boiled up like a thing alive. She wanted to scream; to curse. Found the only sound she could make was a ragged hiss.

There wasn’t any fairness to it. World wasn’t meant to be fair, was a fool who expected it, but surely it wasn’t too much a thing, to hope for just this once? Just this once. A little reward, for all that work. A little consideration.

The sky was silent in its damnation. She reached for another curse, found she didn’t have it in her, and she turned back the way she had come; pulling the grass back into shape behind her. She was two paces away before she realised that the insects had stopped chirping.

Isania froze with them.

Silence dominated, as if the world was a thing carved of stone. Where there had been the rustling undergrowth, the constant shuffling of life, now there was only the wind. Her breathing was a dry rasp, so loud that she wondered at how she had never noticed it before. One bit. Two.

Something big moved in the clearing behind her. Pressure on the dry-packed earth.

She felt it in her boots, in her lungs. She dared not breathe. The grass traced its way across her back, her neck, the pressure of the wind like a thousand stinging insects. She needed to move. Had to move. Could not.

Nothing but silence, and that faint sense of weight on the dirt. She could not have said how long she stayed there for; crouched in place, breath coming in whispered gasps. Could not have said how often she felt that weight shift, imagined teeth closing around her neck, yanking her back, away. She died a hundred deaths in her own mind.

It was an eternity before noise returned to the plains, and another after that before she dared move again.

[Isania Tannan]

She drank the dew from her clothes that night.

Crouched half-naked over her pack, tent tramped beneath her to catch any wayward drops, waterskin set aside. Sweat, and old water, and Fates-knew what else. A part of her was disgusted at how sweet it tasted.

She’d lived some low moments. Seen folks made slaves, made a few herself. Suffered enough injuries and wept like a babe through the worst of them. Spent half a season retching her guts dry across a sea she’d never learned to name. She scrambled after a spilt drop, licking at the canvas before the stone could steal it from her.

This was a new breed of low, even by her miserly standards.

Strange part was, she couldn’t find it in her to feel too much shame. Perhaps that was the way of it. You hit desperation hard enough, bounced clear and clean back into necessity. Might’ve been someone else scrambling over the canvas, squeezing a rag of a tunic tight, chasing the droplets, for all that it moved her.

Somewhere along the way she had got too thirsty for dread, too hungry for fear, too desperate for pride. She slapped her foot down, caught a fleeing stream. The thought was more comforting than it had any right to be.

She slept a dreamless sleep, tent-canvas pulled tight around her, and woke before dawn.

*

Made a routine of it, from that morning on.

She tramped down into the grasslands as soon as she woke; spare clothes tied about her wrists, her ankles. Pushed through the damp stalks until fear and heat and strain drove her back up onto the mountainside. A break, then, spent wringing water from fabric, drinking what she could, marshalling the rest into her waterskin.

Wasn’t elegant, but to the pit with elegant. It worked.

Days fell, one into the other and for the first time, she saw a beauty in the Plains. An honesty. The mountains were hard and sharp beneath her, the wind cold as a blade, but there was nothing false in them.

The bruised sky, the hungry grasslands. Murderous bastards, all of them. Just like the people they bred. Just like her. She found herself grinning as she wrestled her pack over another boulder. Every aching bone, every burning cut, every stolen mouthful of water; was a word of defiance whispered from her to the grasslands.

She didn’t cheer when she glimpsed the great stonework of Heaven’s Fall rising from crags, but only because her parched throat had given up on speech.

The Fool’s Run was to her back. Only the grasslands remained.

[Isania Tannan]

10 Vhalar, 718

Smoke spilled across the afternoon sky like blood from a wound. A cloud wreathed in black, coloured with specks of deeper orange like a madman’s painting. The smell of burned meat came with it.

It was the second caravan she’d seen since she left Heaven’s Fall behind her. She didn’t need to follow the smoke to know what waited beneath it. Arrow-ridden corpses. Wagons looted for what could be carried on horseback; and the remains set ablaze. Yari never paid for what could just as easily be taken. They were a pragmatic people, and a little blood could save a lot of gold.

It was a fact foreign caravans tended to forget.

Last one she’d happened on, one of the horses was still twitching despite the spear buried in its flank, screaming like a banshee. Hadn’t been a winning experience for either of them; but she’d filled her packs with horsemeat. Stringy and about as delicate as eating rock, but after eight trials of dried rations it was a King’s banquet. She had celebrated with a fire.

Hoofbeats on the horizon dragged her back to the present.

Isania pulled her pack close and scrambled off the hard-pressed grass that served as a road between the northern fortress and Yaralon. She crouched, still, waited for them to pass. It did not take long. A flash of motion through the plants. Four riders, armed and armoured. The pounding of hooves, the creak of bit and harness, and they were gone.

City foraging parties. Had to be close to the walls now. She inched closer, trying to catch a glimpse through the grass. Wasn’t likely they’d be coming back for her. Slim pickings on a lone traveller. But there were an awful lot of graves with ‘Not Likely’ on the headstone. Better to be cautious than to join them. So she waited a while longer, strands pricking at her face, before she stepped back onto the path.

Was a half-trial, before she reached the caravan. Her hopes hadn't been high, and what she saw there didn't lift them any. Three smoking piles that had been wagons; a few blackened silhouettes in the grass around them that might’ve been men or might’ve been animals. Wasn’t an easy thing to tell, and she hadn’t the inclination to look too close. No children, at the least. The raiders weren’t that foolish. Every motherless child on the Plains belonged to the walled city, bought back and made a Yari. Might be there were a few more, tonight.

Four bodies ringed the smoking piles, baked into their mail. Guards and mercenaries. They’d died facing the foe; which was about all that anyone could’ve asked from them. Impossible to tell, if they’d been young or old, man or woman. Impossible to tell, if this was the same caravan she’d left behind in the Fool’s Run. Wasn’t a pleasant thing to think on.

Would’ve been nice, to say a few words for them, but the sad fact was that nothing came to mind. All she could feel was a sick sort of relief; that she hadn’t been with them, that it hadn’t been her.

She pulled her tunic over her mouth so she didn’t have to breathe it in. Swallowed the bile and moved on to the next set of smoking remains, made to roll them with her boot. The body creaked, charred flesh peeling away from the hard-packed dirt like skinning a pig. She retched, left it be, moved to more intact leavings.

Was near to nightfall by the time she was content to move on. The raiders had been through. Wasn’t a thing worth the having, ‘less she was in the business of collecting ashes.

There was some sort of gift, though. Hidden by daylight, the night bought with it a line of distant torches, bobbing on the horizon. Sentries atop a wall. She knew that pattern. Had known it since she was a girl.

If she kept her pace, she’d be in Yaralon by dawn. She thought of the caravan, cut down where they stood. Awful sudden, sleep didn't look half so appealing as it had.

By the time she stumbled through the Spear Gate, past the raiders mounting up, she scarcely cared where they pressed the Silver Circle.

[Alistair]

Isania

Knowledges
Hunting: Butchering a Horse
Field Craft: Water from dew.
Field Craft: Setting a grass fire.
Endurance: Pressing on despite exhaustion.
Tactics: Anatomy of a Successful Raid
Tactics: Avoiding Battles

Loot: Not going to list because these injuries would be too short lived.
Injuries: N/A
Renown: +5

Points 10

Comments: With Isania being a new character, this was very well done. The amount of personality that she already has, and the sort of worldview that she already appears to operate under, is highly well defined - particularly for her short lifespan on this site. I also generally like your writing style; the wording is very compelling and leaves little to be desired, both in your descriptors and dialogue. Absolutely great intro to this character!

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