6.3 The Iron-Haul Trail

Location: On the road to Fubar
Timeline: Sixth Age, 53rd Year, Fall

The next day found Emcorae and Nathily safely away from Skarra Bree and little concerned about anyone catching them from behind – not with the elvish mares rode. Meanwhile The Iron Haul Trail lived up to its grim name—a rusted artery carved through the throat of the northern hills. The earth beneath the horses’ hooves was a bruised red, the dust of a thousand years of Akkanian ore transport clinging to everything like dried blood. On either side, the terrain plummeted into lightless ravines where a stagnant mist pooled.

Emcorae and Nathily moved like shadows through the gloom. Although they wore their armor, they remained swaddled in their travel-stained cloak, their fine elven blades hidden beneath the folds of the wool – for now more than ever they knew they needed to remain obscure as Diked’s spies would surely be on the lookout for Emcorae.

As they pressed onward from Skarra Bree, the world seemed to unravel. The trees here were stunted, their bark peeling away in long, sickly strips as if the forest itself were suffering from a skin disease. They had seen fewer people on this trail—only the occasional silhouette of a scavenger picking through a discarded cart in the distance, or the distant, rhythmic thud of a woodcutter’s axe that would stop the moment Mossflower’s or Joanne’s hooves echoed against the path.

In spite of their earlier emotional connection, the silence between the two warriors had returned – soon growing worse than ever and becoming a living thing – heavy and suffocating. Since the trail here was tighter, Emcorae road in the lead and Nathily behind. The endless watched the back of Emcorae’s head and wondered what he was thinking. She guessed that he was sulking again, but she had no idea had bad it had become.

The gloomy landscape soured Emcorae’s mood and his mind was a fractured collage of the past mixed with a burning, singular vision of the future: King Diked’s head on a pike. Allowing himself to sink into the depression, he quickly became a vessel for a cold rage. He saw the laughing eyes of Lynsy Finch one moment, and the blood-soaked mud of his burned out family hovel the next. He was using his hatred as a fuel, but that tinder was burning away his connection to reality. Had it not been for Joanne’s unerring instinct for the trail, he might have ridden straight into a ravine, lost in the shadows of his own memory.

But then Nathily raised herself in the saddle and called out, “Ware” to warn her partner.

Joanne had already pulled up and as Emcorae came back to reality, he saw that from behind a cluster of wind-gnarled, blackened pines, a cloaked figure lunged into their path with a desperate, animalistic shriek. The sudden movement caused the mounts to rear back, their whinnies sharp with alarm as they fought for footing on the slick red dust. Emcorae had already drawn his katana, his eyes wide and wild, the instinct to kill flaring in his gaze. Nathily was faster still, leaping off her mare and positioning herself between Emcorae and the intruder, her falchia dazzling in the mist.

“Stay back!” she commanded, her voice ringing out in the damp air.

The figure in the road didn’t charge. Instead, he collapsed onto his knees, his hands clawing at the red earth. When he dropped his hood, the elfess was surprised to see it was Bram, the miner she had encountered in the stables of Skarra Bree.

“You?” Nathily narrowed her eyes, suspecting mischief. “Did you dare to follow me? How did you get ahead of us?”

“PLEASE! Stay ya arms!” Bram shrieked, his voice cracking like dry wood. As before, the peasant’s clothes were shredded into filthy rags, his skin a roadmap of red scratches and grey sore. Yet to Nathily’s surprise, he was far more crazed than their last encounter. Groveling before them, Bram tore at his matted hair, his eyes darting with a frantic, glazed intensity.

“Do you know this crazed mutt?” Emcorae asked the elfess.

In spite of her attempts to hide it, Nathily’s face reddened – remembering the two men who tried her assault her. She’d never told Emcorae the reason why they had to leave Skarra Bree so quickly and in his depression Emcorae had never bothered to ask. She wasn’t about to open that can of worms now so she merely answered, “Aye, he was in the stables.”

It was Bram to saved Nathily from further explanation as he babbled, “Tell ’em. She knows. I mean ya no ‘arm! But ‘arm is the only crop left in dis valley! Diked the Doomed is killin’ us all! He’s feedin’ da furnace wit’ our children!”

“Speak plainly, man!” Emcorae commanded, his voice a harsh rasp that showed no pity. He was furious at being caught unawares, his pulse hammering against his ribs. “What’s the king got to do with your kids?”

“Tis the plague!” Bram wailed, swaying back and forth in the dust. “Da king unleashed da ghost of da mountain! He sent us to Akka… to da deep stone! He ‘ad no right to send us diggers der! It wadn’t ‘is treasure ta take! Da stealing fool!”

Bram began to grab at his hair, pulling so hard that tufts of it came away in his blood-crusted fingernails. He shook his fists toward the eastern horizon, toward the invisible towers of Fubar. “Wha’ good is da dwarves’ gold now, eh, my king? Does it buy back da lungs of me boy? Does it stop da steam from rising from me wife’s bed?”

The air on the Iron Haul Trail felt like it was curdling, thickening with a spiritual rot that matched the physical decay of the man kneeling in the red dust. Nathily felt a cold dread settle in the pit of her stomach—not the sharp fear of a blade, but the hollow, echoing terror of a world collapsing.

“Are you saying the king invaded Akka?” Nathily asked, her voice trembling with a fury that nearly masked her growing panic. “The Pietromi were allies. To strike their homeland while their warriors were away… it is a coward’s act. A sin worthy of retribution.”

“No lass, he sent da commoners!” Bram screamed, spittle flying from his cracked lips as he rocked back and forth. “We fetched ‘is spoils, while he and dat Steward Ramssee sat behind da gates! Dey expelled us ta die in our own filth when da sickness began ta boil! We was used, Elv-ess! Used an’ discarded like spent ore!”

As Bram raved, horror took a firmer hold of Nathily’s heart. Akka, she thought, the name echoing like a funeral knell. If Diked had violated the ancient, deep-vaults of the dwarves, he hadn’t just stolen gold; he had disturbed a silence that had lasted for ages. This wasn’t just a human war anymore. This was a continental catastrophe. This rot—this “steam” that boiled the life from the limbs of men—could drift south on the wind. It could reach the Great Forest. It could wither the roots of the world-tree while the Council sat debating forest farming.

I have to go, her mind screamed. I have to leave him. My father… the Mysstros… they are blind to this. If I don’t warn them, Arbola will burn in a fever it cannot fight.

She began to back away toward Mossflower, her boots crunching softly on the earth. She looked at the saddle, calculating the days. If she rode without rest, she could reach the border before the moon waned. She was a daughter of Arbola, a guardian of the “Breath of Life.” Her existence was a vow to the collective, to the preservation of her people. To stay here was a betrayal of every drop of elven blood in her veins.

“We’re going to kill your king, Bram,” Emcorae’s words sliced through her internal panic like a blade.

Nathily stopped, her hand frozen on Mossflower’s reins. Bram looked up, a manic, conspiratorial grin splitting his grimy face. “Kill ‘im? Yes. Avenge us! But ya’ll never git through da gates. Ramssee ‘as built new walls—towerin’ tings of stone an iron. Da soldiers ‘ave orders ta shoot anythin’ that moves. Da death-pits in front of da city are wide an deep. Ya’ll be corpses before ya see da palace spire.”

“Nothing will stop us,” Emcorae boasted, his voice ringing with a terrifying, hollow confidence. He didn’t even look back at her; he simply assumed she was his shadow. “Right, Nat?”

Nathily stood by her horse, the animal’s warm breath the only thing that felt real in the world. She could mount up right now. She could pull the reins and vanish into the mist. Emcorae would understand… eventually. He would see that the fate of a nation outweighed the death of a single tyrant.

But look at him, her heart whispered, a slow-acting poison of devotion spreading through her chest.

She looked at the line of his shoulders, the way his hand gripped his weapon, and the utter, terrifying confidence he had in her presence. If she left, he wouldn’t turn back. He would march into those “death-pits” alone. He would be consumed by the Red Death, another nameless body in the pile of husks, and worst of all, he would die thinking she had abandoned him.

I am a traitor, she realized, and the thought felt like a physical weight crushing her. I am choosing a single heart over the breath of my entire race. I am being selfish. I am being small. And yet I cannot stop myself.

Every instinct of her Azora training—the logic, the stoicism, the duty—was screaming “Madness!” but it was drowned out by the memory of honey-bread in the sun and the boy who used to laugh with her. There really was no choice. There had never been a choice. She was anchored to Emcorae – for better or worse – and she would follow him into the mouth of the death, even if it meant her soul was barred from the Alyssian Fields forever.

Bram broke the suffocating silence, scrambling closer on his knees. The stench of him was a rancid cloud that made the horses shy away. “Ol’ Bram knows da veins of da earth. Da southeast corner… where da nat’ral cliffs meet da palace grounds. Ramssee’s walls can’t cover da high stone. Under ‘ose hills, da sewers let out. Da actual palace drains! I worked ’em for Diked’s father Karl. De’re wet, dey’re foul, an’ dey’re filled wit’ da King’s waste, but dey’ll put ya’s inside da walls, past da guards, past da death-pits.”

Nathily was still submerged in her own darkness, her mind a haze of guilt and love, barely processing the miner’s words. She was a traitor. The thought looped in her mind. A traitor for a man who didn’t even know he was taking her down with him.

The spell broke when Emcorae suddenly dismounted. His movements stripped of his usual grace. He reached down and snatched Bram by the neck of his rags, lifting him half off the ground. “How do we know this isn’t a ruse?”

The violence of the movement snapped Nathily back to the present. Her Azora training surged to the surface, a familiar coldness that allowed her to compartmentalize her strife. She needed to focus on the danger in front of them, even if the danger inside her was winning. She stepped forward, joining Emcorae, her eyes narrowing as she looked down at the crazed man.

“How do we know you aren’t the King’s dog?” she asked, her voice sharp and merciless, channeling her self-loathing into the interrogation. “How do we know that Steward Ramssee isn’t waiting at the end of that pipe with a butcher’s knife?”

Bram’s face twisted in an agony so raw it was almost unbearable. “Me son is dead!” he roared, a sound of unadulterated grief. He collapsed back into a fit of weeping, and as Emcorae let him go his forehead pressed into the red dust. “I want ta see da King burn! I want ta see da Steward choke on da silver ‘e stole from Akka! Avenge me family!”

With a sudden, bird-like jerk of his head, Bram scrambled to his feet. A frantic, wide-eyed terror seized him, as if he had suddenly remembered an appointment with a monste. He pointed toward the gathering gloom of the east, his hand trembling so violently it seemed to blur, and before the Azoras could utter a single command to stay him, Bram bolted. He dove into the mist-filled ravine with an unnatural, jagged speed, his tattered rags fluttering like the wings of a dying moth before he disappeared into the fog—a spirit returning to the earth from which he had been unceremoniously dug.

Shocked at this sudden, erratic turn of events, Emcorae and Nathily looked at one another in wonder. The silence that followed was heavier than before, the uncertainty of the encounter chilling their marrow more than the biting northern wind.

“Do you believe him?” Nathily asked, her hand resting heavily on Mossflower’s neck to still the mare’s rhythmic trembling. “It could be a ruse. A way to lead us into a bottleneck—a killing floor where the King’s men are already waiting with their pikes leveled.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Emcorae said, turning Joanne around and absently petting her neck. His eyes were fixed on the horizon, where the sky was beginning to bleed a sickly grey. “A sewer or a gate, it leads to the same neck. I’m not leaving this black kingdom until I take Diked’s head.”

But then face softened and he turned to her, his voice dropping into an uncharacteristic vulnerability. “But we both know the truth, Nat. You need to return with all speed to Arbola. Someone has to tell the world what’s happening here. We can’t both risk our lives—if we perish, and the odds say we will, then the plague may well sweep through TerrVerde unopposed. But… if you leave, you can save people. You can warn them. You—”

“Hush, Em!” Nathily’s hand flew to his lips. She wanted to scream at the sky as stinging tears pooled in her eyes, threatening to shatter the warrior’s mask she wore so precariously. She felt the crushing weight of her choice—the silent abandonment of Arbola, the reckless ignoring of the “Teresius Warning,” and the cold, rotting reality of the bodies she had left in the Skarra Bree hay. Every instinct of her blood cried out for her to be the hero her people needed, but her heart had already committed its treason.

“You already know my answer, Em,” she whispered, her voice trailing off into the moaning wind. “I am going with you to the very end. Even if that end is a sewer in a city of the dead. I am with you. Let the rest of the world take care of itself.” She swallowed hard, adding an afterthought to ease the screaming of her conscience: “We’ll get a message to our leaders soon enough—somehow.”

“Are you sure?” Emcorae asked gently, his gaze searching hers. He knew she was taking a gamble that involved more than just her life; she was wagering her soul on his behalf. “Nat, I appreciate your friendship and your blade, but you don’t have to—”

Unable to contain the pressure building in her chest, Nathily blurted out, “But I DO, Em! I DO have to help you! For I l—” She caught herself at the precipice for what must have been the thousandth time, the word “love” hovering like a ghost between them. She hurriedly masked her slip, her face flushing despite the cold. “We are partners! We have always been, and such shall we continue. I cannot forsake you now. Come, no more of this talk. Let us be off. Let’s see if we can find Bram’s secret entrance.”

Emcorae looked at her for a long, silent moment. In the dying light, he could see the shimmering resolve in her eyes—and a devotion so absolute it terrified him. Caught up in the sudden, swelling emotion of their desperate situation, and knowing they were both likely riding toward their deaths he didn’t have words to reply. He could only manage an awkward, boyish grin—the one she remembered from Arbola—and flash those puppy-dog eyes as he reached out and pulled her to his chest. He hugged the elfess tightly against, burying his face in her lustrous hair as he thanked Alyssa for the gift of such a friend.

For Nathily, that simple, desperate gesture was more meaningful than saving the world. Her heart soared, momentarily deaf to the drumbeat of doom that awaited them at the cliffs of Fubar. For a heartbeat, she wasn’t a traitor or a scout; she was simply a woman held by the man she had sacrificed everything to follow.

“You heard the Azora, Jo-Jo!” Emcorae finally broke the embrace and mounted up, his spirit bolstered by her presence. “Let’s be off!”

And so they rode one step closer to their doom.