Lothar staggered back to his feet, and the waiting crows set up a mocking chorus. In the dark water, thread-thin larvae wriggled away from the fall of the soldier's shadow in the moonlight.
A ragged tear was opening, however briefly in the clouds. Mannslieb was riding high tonight, a white half-circle in the night sky. Its darker twin trailed somewhere behind, nothing but a green stain of light filtering through the clouds.
In the moonlight, he could see the lay of the trees. There was a shallow slope leading up out of the dell on the other side of the water, free of thorns and bracken. It seemed as good a direction as any.
Rubbing his ring for luck, Lothar stumbled on.
~
A broken elm stood at the top of the ridge, its roots twisting through a tangle of old grey stones. A deep wound had been carved in its bark at head-height, the crude shape of a ram's skull savagely hacked down to the quick. By the growth of lichen the moonlight picked out, it had been some time since the mark had been re-cut.
The clouds were closing up again, stealing the precious light. Scanning left and right, Lothar saw a way downhill. He knew if he was to find his way back to the village, he had to find the river, and the river would be downhill. That made sense, didn't it?
The hillside was crowded with stunted trees, many of them dead. Stumbling between their exposed roots, he tried to avoid tripping over the mossy boulders that fouled his footing - the forest floor was a mess of stones and broken earth, muddy ravines descending between the trees.
Something brittle rolled away under his boot, and suddenly he was falling, skidding down on his back into a deeper pit than he had expected. Picking himself up, he leapt back like a startled hare as he found himself staring at the tip of a rusted spear. His hand flew to his sword, ready to strike.
The spear didn't move. Its wielder didn't move either - crumpled with its back against the muddy bank of earth, it smelt of mould and rot. Stepping cautiously closer, Lothar reached out with his sword to give it a careful prod.
Unbalanced from where it had laid to brace its back, the corpse toppled slowly sideways, the spear still locked in its bony hands. It was a creature no larger than a child, with cloven hooves and little nubs of horns sprouting from its temples; one of the un-men that followed the larger beasts. He'd seen its like in the attack on the Delberz road.
The ubiquitous crows had been at its eyes and face, reducing its head to a skeletal ruin. Its skin stank like rotted leather, black beetles crawling through round holes in the corpse's desiccated hide. There was a deep wound in the side its shrunken belly, the mark of a lance - a deserter from the barrow battle, then, surviving long enough to crawl up here to die. Looking round at the crowding trees, Lothar wondered with creeping apprehension how many of its brothers might have survived unwounded.
The wind whined, and the clouds swallowed the moonlight for good. Scrambling up and over the Ungor's resting place, Lothar blundered on down the slope, stones skittering away from under his boots. In the darkness behind him, he heard a receding chorus of croaks - the crows had found the body too. At least that might stop them from following him for a while.
The wound in Lothar's side was burning like a brand every time he moved. His throat was parched, and the pangs of his empty stomach joined the aching of his legs in a kind of light-headed haze.
He didn't know how long he'd been walking, nor where he was. He only knew he couldn't see, and he had to keep moving. If he didn't keep moving, the crows would catch up. Disjointed fragments of Sigurd's song from the stunt at the manor were rolling persistently around the inside of his head, dogging his thought.
Morr took his soul, but left the rest,
And ravens did what crows do best...
"What're you running from?"
Lothar looked up. Seeing things. Great.
"You know running's no good," said Raffy, fingering that bloody blunderbuss. "Stand up and fight."
Gods, he
had fallen down. The world looked pretty much the same from any angle in this darkness; a scraped knee or a grazed palm seemed like one more twinge in a world of pain. He pushed himself staggering back to his feet, and mumbled something obscene at the henna-haired shade. Maybe it would be alright just to lie down for a while.
"You're going to let them get away with this? You know Ith's itching to bolt. They need you."
Lothar turned away, feeling his way through the trees.
"You think this thing's too strong to fight? Jagrun was stronger than me."
You tell yourself a story, and cast yourself as the hero.
The hallucination took on Ilsa's face. Blood trickled slowly from the wound the Skaven had made in her midriff.
"Kemperbad was stronger than me."
You deny to yourself that all stories have endings.
The shade slid between darkened trunks, effortlessly swinging back into Lothar's field of view. Of course it would.
"This is bad business. Something needs doing about it." Marius von Brucker, the reflections of fires glinting in his immaculately-polished armour. "You'll forgive my saying so, but you look like a likely bunch."
They died as all men die, in fear and in pain, soon forgotten and left to rot.
"Come, m'sieur Fischer. What do you owe these people?"
Ribault's face crouched down in front of his, looming large and pale through the darkness.
"Some peasants are dead," he said, the words seeming to echo as they faded away. The vision rippled and distorted, taking on hints of rusted armour and a faceless visor, but the Breton's voice remained. "Hanging me is not going to bring them back..."
With a last whisper, the ghosts were gone. Feeling the rough bark of a tree-trunk under his trunk, Lothar stopped to catch his breath.
His legs hardly answered his head any more. Somewhere away through the trees, he thought he could hear running water. There was something familiar about this place, about the rocky gullies and mossy boulders over which he tripped and stumbled... but it was not the village.
He was lost, and he couldn't walk any more.
OOC: Spoiler
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OOC: Two more rolls, and we're done with the dice. An Intelligence test to recognise why this place looks familiar, and if that fails a third basic Survival check.
Midnight has passed, so your fortune points have refreshed.