Before we dig in, I don’t have an official title for this. It is just a world I’ve been building and stories I’ve been fleshing out for a long time that have finally come to fruition. I had hit a sticking point on Outlanders and thought it best to switch gears for a while. I hope you enjoy.
Eighty miles. It may as well be a world away. Eighty miles from the small village of Ashbaile, along the coast of the Red Sea and following the Crimson Road northwest lie the trenches of the front line. Eighty miles separated the village from the perpetual bloodshed and the barely shifting lines of trenches that have endured almost a century of shelling and the loss of life. This narrow Isthmus, known as Gehenna’s Gate to the residents of Devlet, has known only war, and what little vegetation that now grows here is watered with the blood of heroes.
Eighty miles. It may seem a world away, but for the residents of Ashbaile it seemed like it was within their own backyard. During the worst of fighting, soldiers on the move to Gehenna’s Gate quartered within the village. The small armies were a plague of locusts that had descended upon the village, and when they moved through they consumed all within their ravenous path, depleting pantries and local morale alike. When the fighting at the Gate was especially atrocious the empire sent surgeons to the villages that dotted the Crimson Road, and it was along this path that Ashbaile had the misfortune of resting.
The village itself had a quaint rustic feel. Cottages made of stone and wood lined unfinished roads, and a small cobblestone wall hugged its perimeter in a warm and protective embrace. The countryside that lay beyond those low-built walls was dotted with a few farms, and a scattering of other dwellings, and in a normal spring morning such as this one children would be heard running and laughing, but in this particular cool wet morning, only the silence of death could be heard. Mornings like this, when the sun peered over the rolling hills of the east and the sky exploded into a vibrant maelstrom of color so vivid and beautiful it was enough to pull the breath from your lungs. But, despite the dance of colors flourishing in the morning sky, the dark cloud of the Gate hung just opposite, ready to extinguish the fire.
The silence of the morning broke with a frantic pounding. Cormac’s body tensed at the sound, and he sucked in his breath sharply as the deep thump of heavy fists echoed throughout Cormac’s home and startled him and his family.
“Cormac! Cormac!” A voice cried.
Cormac and his family were seated at his table, in the center of the cottage. Behind him the kitchen, with its modest assortment of pots and pans, and ahead of him his beautiful wife, though beyond her was the source of the consternation, the front door.
“That, my dear, sounds like Dolan.” Maeve spoke. Cormac listened. Her voice massaged the tension from his body, and he relaxed at the softness with which she spoke.
“Agreed.” Cormac replied. He stared into her eyes as he spoke, always lost in that maelstrom of color. They always reminded him of the Arnican sunrise.
Cormac stood up and wiped his hands, kissed his wife on the forehead, and walked to the door, “Hold on, Dolan. I’m coming.”
When he opened the door he was not disappointed. Dolan stood outside, walking stick in hand, which he had been using to ruthlessly bludgeon Cormac’s door.
“You keep beating my door with that stick, and one day it may find your head a more sensible target.” Cormac said, his voice a mixture of humor and annoyance.
Dolan stepped back, slightly startled at the abruptness with which the door was opened.
“Oh…” Dolan started, “Yes, yes. But Cormac. My dear boy. Have you still got your service rifle?” His voice was a bit raspy and wet. He lived in a constant state of being disheveled, and his balding head was littered with wild shocks of long white hair.
Cormac tensed a little at the question, and he narrowed his eyes at Dolan before glancing back over his shoulder and nodding to the bolt action rifle that hung above his wood burning stove in the kitchen.
“Of course I do. What kind of silly question…” Cormac started to respond.
“Make sure it’s serviceable! Town meeting! Noon!” Dolan looked nervous. He noticed the family behind Cormac, all seated at the table.
“Apologies, Maeve. Didn’t mean to interrupt! Finn!” Dolan waved at Cormac’s wife and son and smiled slightly.
Finn, a young man just old enough for the course stubble of manhood to take hold on his chin, sat snickering to himself. He had known Dolan his whole life, and to him the old man was a clown and a fool. Maeve smiled politely, her auburn hair looked dark in the dim light of the cottage, and she spoke, “Would you like to join us, Dolan?”
Finn immediately stopped snickering and looked at his mother, his face twisted in a visage of mock fear.
“Appreciate it, Maeve, but I cannot! I need to round up the council! Town Meeting, you know!” And with a final wave of his hand, Dolan abruptly turned and marched away, muttering to himself the whole time.
Cormac watched him walk down the cobblestone street for a little bit, only turning to come back into the house once he had turned at a distant intersection. Cormac then returned to the table, kissed his wife, and resumed his meal with Maeve and Finn.
In the few hours before noon the family spent their time in the general maintenance of the cottage. Cormac worked with Finn to split logs he had purchased for the wood stove. After which they were both at the mercy of Maeve, cleaning whatever she deemed necessary. “Maeve the Taskmaster”, Cormac would playfully call her. She ran a tight ship, but her ability to organize and her drive were just a couple of the things he found so mesmerizing. It wouldn’t take long for time to creep away, as it had a tendency to do, and noon came much faster than anyone had expected.
The chamber hall was small, compact, and could comfortably seat around ten, but when Cormac got there it was only half-filled. Dolan sat in a chair, they had all been arranged in a circle facing inwards.
To keep people from looking at this putrid wallpaper, Cormac thought as he entered the room.
The wallpaper itself wasn’t ugly, it had a very rustic and basic pattern. Vines weaved their way vertically from floor to ceiling, with spade-shaped floral patterns scattered in the larger gaps created by the vines. The issue Cormac had with the wallpaper was the color. The vines themselves were a muted, but charming, green that was offset by a detestable shade of not quite yellow. Its hue was somewhere between rot and infant feces, and made the whole room feel dirty.
“Dolan.” Cormac said as he seated himself across from the man and looked around the room.
Dolan. Lorcan. Brigit. Matthew. Cormac took stock of who all was here. Five in total.
“Where is everyone else?” Cormac asked.
“They didn’t show.” Brigit responded. She owned the sawmill. Inherited it when her husband died, though she was a damn sight better at managing and running its operations than he ever was. She pushed her graying hair back as she spoke.
“I see. Well, Do-Little. What is this about?” Cormac asked. Do-Little had become a term of endearment for Dolan. He was a genuine and good person, and had ambition in his own way, but he was slow to change, and when confronted with change his response was typically to do nothing and ignore it until the change either took hold or went away.
A brief silence gripped the room before Matthew spoke, his voice tired, his face weary.
“Corc. Couple farmers spotted Devleti troops marching west towards Ashbaile on High Ground Road.”
Cormac listened intently. Matthew’s was a voice he respected, as they spent time together in the trenches of the Gate, bonds of iron were forged in those hellish trenches. The news of the soldiers was as unexpected as they were welcome, which is, not at all.
“Next round of the boys up to the slaughter. We know where they are from?” Cormac’s voice was calm, but his face was filled with a mixture of stress and sorrow. So much life wasted in battle after battle. Sometimes he wondered if the violence would ever end.
“Yeah. They carry the crossed sabers of Serevan.” Matthew looked down after he spoke, the memories of the trenches flooded back when he had seen the banner himself.
The room had been filled with the faint buzz of whispers while the council spoke amongst themselves. At the mention of Serevan the whispers stopped. The room grew silent. Cormac looked around at the people in the room. Each one of them carried the weight of exhaustion on their faces. Tired from years of supporting soldiers. Feeding sons that weren’t theirs to support a war that wasn’t theirs. Dolan was the only council member that could remember the time before Devlet. The time of a free Arnica. The rest were too young, relying on intangible memories stolen from generations past.
Cormac took in a deep breath and released it with an exhausted sigh. Dolan was the elder, and by all rights he should have taken charge, but Cormac had become the de facto elder.
“Do Little, Ideas?” Cormac asked, knowing that Dolan would do nothing in this situation.
Do-Little was filled with enthusiasm and wisdom, but loathed change, and was slow to make decisions. A ponderous turtle with a hare’s brain. Cormac, thanks in part to his time in the trenches, had come back a decisive man with a disdain for wasting time. This had been the catalyst that pushed the rest of the council to look to him when the old man got caught up in his thoughts and refused to make a decision on matters.
Dolan stared back at Cormac, his mouth opening and closing slowly, but no words came out. He was a fish out of water, and it was clear for all to see. When he got no response, Cormac spoke again.
“I suppose, if they seek shelter, we quarter them. I’ll meet with their commanding officer when they arrive,” Cormac said.
Brigit shuddered, her face screwed up in a twist of anger and sorrow, “To hell with them.”
“Your dwelling should be off limits,” Cormac said, “And while I don’t disagree with you, picking a fight with the regulars isn’t the best plan of action we have.”
Brigit stared hatefully at Cormac. She had lost her husband in the same trenches Cormac came back from. Every day that went by the wound inside of her festered and grew. The hate she felt for Devlet was cultivated and nurtured until it had become a deep-rooted cancer. She had never blamed Cormac, nor Matthew, for coming home. Only Devlet, for conscripting the men of the village into the war they were forced to adopt.
Brigit’s voice broke the standing silence. It was lava in the ears, “One day… One day I’ll kill them all.”