* * *
The wood becomes home again. I stay close to the thick trunks; they become the walls of my cave. The spires of my campfire create dying stars in the night. And for the first time in several nights, I eat. Don't mind what, just know I've had feasts more grand. The morning rolls through the trees and I hold spite to know that when I pass the days will toil on just the same. It will even lay claim to my property, without the utterance of a word, and with no one to fight against it. I've grown used to the warmth in my blanket of earth. My wakefulness to the songbirds. And the taste of my own blood since the night. I walk the edge of the wood that corners the castle Murray, hoping to find both the least occupied entrance and my courage. My feet sift through bramblebushes, long-forgotten to react to pain. I find the road less-traveled, and begin my trek. When I was met with fate and the pride to swallow, I made my way to the West gate. All through my life, a chorus would sound when I walked the procession to my throne. My walk to the gate through the hardened ground... naught but the birds sang for me now. Dogs crowded the carts selling meats and nipped the hooves of horses. Soon the flock of scavengers got wind of old blood. Me, a thing yet living, who smelled and looked of a corpse. Their bark melted slowly into the still of the air, and the carts followed the dogs' stares, and pulled away to let me pass. The shirtless, bootless man with a lancer's sword drug behind. The road quieted, and the birds sang into their second verse.
The four guards at the gate, donning the Murray colors, follow the parting ways of the crowd. Surprisingly, they see me as no threat 'til already I see the polluted whites of their eyes. They halt me, and ask me of my business. I tell them that I have slain enemies beside the Murray name before, and wish to seek counsel with their king. They laugh, as anyone would, and continue to do so as I name the battlefields in which I bare my proof. My mind is tired and wags my tongue as if it juggles coals in my mouth and my words begin to stumble. I'm pulled backward, a guard I did not see. When I look from the ground, I see contemptuous stares from those who laughed before. "Leper!" they cried and the people tore from my way more. "He carries the sickness with him!" They must've not seen my spots before, until one walked behind to inspect the hysteric they claimed I am.
"The mark of death bares upon him!" I hear the familiar insults. The recognizable stares. The choir of birds break into the rising notes of children. I look up at the guards. One yells at me while the rest throw a chain upon my neck. His helmet splits at the top and hangs down-- much like a jester. The others come 'round to him. They no longer bare the colors Murray. They bare mine. I look around to meet the stares of dogs and men. Familiar faces all. When they pull the chain, it comes studded with jewels. Ones from my crown. I fall onto the ground, carpeted like my courtroom, and am dragged from the West gate. As I choke for air, raked across the stones, I watch the sun get brighter, the choir louder, and my body colder.
* * *
I stare at the wooden gate, scarred from the scratches of the dying. Those left alive scatter from the streets. I've been quarantined from the rest of the kingdom, along with the other ill and infirm, and sectioned into an abandoned part of the city. The dead are piled higher near the door from which I came than they are in the gutters along the road. People who have attempted to flee when the guards open the doors to bring a new arrival no doubt. It takes no second look to see that this is some quarter of the kingdom to wall-off only the infected. Murray has made himself a city of the dead. Peasants with open sores bleed through the streets and into the alleyways. Their clothes and rags stretched tight around their otherwise naked bodies. I stand alone in the quiet of the road. Not even the birds sing here. The muffled sounds of the rest of the healthy population rise in a wave over the large, stone, battlement wall and echoes between the derelict buildings. They dangle the freedom of these prisoners in the form of a broken and battered gate. It focuses their attention from both sides. All my thoughts tell me to find another way out, away from their distractions. I turn around and face the long road ahead of me. I know this place. Visited often after battle. I've been here, myself.
This is what they've called "Pleasure Square", now littered with the coughing and groveling of bounded strangers. As the day went on more people would dance in the street. Now the wind is the only thing moving with grace. The dead mark along the roads where the women sold their flesh. The streets are long with the dead and grime of those left to the gutters and rainfall to wash the meat from their bones. There were people in the gutters then, too. They laid among the piss and trash. Though not as many were dead as there are now.
It's harder to navigate the roads when it isn't filled with people standing. And yet I know exactly where I'm going. Even without a sword holstered in my palm, the infected stay to the walls and let me pass. I skirt the wall leading to the inner city, passing the puddles of blood and piles of filth. The masses of what I assumed were the dead move and speak here and there, always garnering surprise. It's not long before the purple royal flags of Murray, draped over the upper bannisters, draw me like a beacon to the house against the barrier wall. The roof nearly comes to the top of the mortar, just barely out of reach to anyone dreaming escape.
It was a large enough building to house the legions or rather their ghosts inside. The door clicked against its own broken hinges. This place was long-since ruined by the ill masses that couldn't accept their fate. Curtains were thrashed from the walls. The kegs were split in desperation long ago. The ale had dried since, warping the floorboards and draughting a molding scent. No one lived here. It's been abandoned for the next target, something else that's reminded them that happiness and freedom was ever such a thing. No candles to light my way upstairs. Only through the broken windows can you see what kind of air you breathe, what floats in it.
Bundles of clothing and rags carpet my walk through the upper hallway and softens my footsteps. The doors lay away from the privacy they used to hide and banished to the floor. My curiosity does not wander to the other rooms, for my intent is clear-- I will escape through the last door on the right. The room is punished in every manner, just like the rest. The bed is gone, the window shutters fallen to the street, the clothes and costumes of whores thrown and torn to the wayside. Of all the furniture destroyed, the large oaken wardrobe still stands.
This room is far and away the largest room in the whorehouse. Royalty has slept here. Myself among others. But there's reason to not be seen entering such places. The wardrobe was always our in. Today it marks my way out. Frustrated at not being able to tip the wardrobe away from the wall-- and for good reason-- the rioters cut into its sides with pokers and whatever else they found to chip away at the wood. But the proud bastard still stood. The doors were gone, like all the rest. I stepped through the rib cage of the leviathan and felt to the back of its throat. The back panel slipped away silently, folding itself inward to the dark passage behind. The draft of old air smelled as good as mountain's breath after the death I've walked through. A discarded brown blanket lay among the scraps of others next to the wardrobe. I swiped it and with a last look to ghosts' past, continued through the tunnel and shut the way behind me.
There's a gap between the false back of the wardrobe and my escape. About ten meters I walk through the foundations of the building, through the battlement wall, and through the walls of the building on the other side. Wide enough to carry a soldier in full armor, or a king in all his elaborate garb. I opened the false backing to the wardrobe that connects me to the inner city and stood in its emptiness. But the doors to the wardrobe itself wouldn't budge. It wasn't more than the thought that I might be truly trapped in a dead city that urged me to break shoulders and forearms against the closed doors. I didn't care if someone heard. You must understand, I was desperate. A mere 4 centimeters of wood between myself and freedom. The walls closed in as if I was already buried. When I heard the wood crack and splint I half-expected my mouth to fill with dirt. With a final shove, I fell through the doors and onto the floor of a dark and forgotten room. The taste of dust was all but a relief, as good as fruit.
I jutted my head upward to make sure I didn't seal my fate with all the noise. This house was used for diplomatic hearings. A courthouse of sorts, but for matters off the written record. Souls were sold between the murmurings of generals and colleagues in little more than a private library. Now it appeared to be abandoned. The wardrobe I was birthed from had been boarded, and left to someone else's responsibility. What furniture was left in the place was held unceremoniously against the walls or turned in no special or remembered way. I was alone. At least in this particular room. I froze my movement and listened hard for anyone coming to inspect the sound of my abrasion. I hadn't listened for the sounds of the crowded streets since I entered the whorehouse, but I now realized the roads were quiet since I broke free. Was I so loud the whole town stopped to listen? Stumbling my feet on my brown robe, I huddled myself against the wall near a window and peered out. The streets were empty. I cared not to find out if the rest of the building was occupied. The sun had now baked its color against every building, coloring the road a stark white against the stones. I walked out onto a nearby patio and hung myself over the rail before dropping down back to the ground. I was free again. Practically naked and without a weapon, but free to roam. My instincts and curiosity fought at the front lines of my brain. Should I leave this place? Or should I sate curiosity and find where everyone, seemingly the whole town, has gone?
The sounds of shouting crowds pull me down the empty streets. Nearly all are gone from the many doorways and gardens that line the way. I pull the brown cloth tighter around my face the closer to the noise I become. Dotted colors wave themselves about toward the end of the street-- a crowd gathered and shouting exclamations of both anger and joy. In the back of my mind I believe the riot is meant for me. I don't long to see the unmuzzled hatred from crowds again. So I join their ranks instead. I meld myself cautiously to the backs of the shouting masses. Their shouts bound off the stage in the middle of the open courtyard. The executioner stands strong, as if to say, "Bring me your sins. I absolve all." The crowd shifts as a man is led up the steps, the cries for murder echo off one another. My eyes take awhile to settle on the accused and the executioner and the third man met by cheers before I realize they all wear royal robes. So it's a revolt in the upper echelons. Treason? Hearsay? Nothing is said by the judge that is heard over the interruptions or the distance. I don't wait for the axefall. I've seen my share. Instead I voyage to the West gate, passing few people on the way. Talk of the execution finds its way to many of them. The crime seems small-- a writ against the king's line. Apparently the accused claimed his innocence before he stood for the trial and sentencing of his blood. No one seems to mind whether he's innocent or not, just that the punishment is served. No one spoke for him. No one cared. It seems my search for honor in death was unjustified. And I no longer know if it's what I want.
The walk to the gate is daunting, with me thinking I'll be discovered through my disguise and offered as a second course to the jackals at the center of town. Every child that skips the steps past me takes a moment to stare. The meddling cut-throats. Reaching the final roadway that leads to the large, wooden, open gates I notice a lull in the noise. The town falls silent. And an uproar tumbles over the rooftops to fall upon me like a hushing wind. The royal prisoner is dead. And the songbirds sing their dirge.
What with the world's population contained in these walls centered at its core to watch the death of another bug, only two guards stand at the entrance to the West gate. Neither pay me mind. Neither thinks twice about a stumbling cloak, a drunk who could afford to do so, until my hands are already upon the face of the guard nearest me. You must understand, I'm no monster, but I refuse to leave without what's mine. Conversation was long past. They tied a chain to me and drug me like bait. Like my life meant nothing before I was already an empty husk. And here, now; yes we could've conversed. We could've bickered and argued and gambled and parted ways amicably for what was given me. But you must understand, I didn't want to. The new invigoration to live surged through me, and turnt itself from a divine gift to a weapon of newfound hate.
His head turns quite easily and the neck follows suit. It's luck that the other guard doesn't yell at first, he simply stammers and charges for me in a straight line beyond the body of his fallen friend, too shocked to understand the correct actions to take. He's too close to draw his sword effectively. He's young and in a blind rage. So I stick my thumbs in his eyes and blind him for good. This is when he finally finds a voice. What few citizens are around stop to stare. They don't see the danger they're in for themselves until I pluck the knife from the soldier's belt and thinly drag it across his throat while he kneels before his judge. The people flee. It means nothing all the same. They can find the nearest guard if they wish, I'll be long gone into the thick of the wood by the time they investigate.
I unfold myself from the blanket with unclean hands and disarm it to the mud around the wheel tracks in the road. The small guard post welcomes me, an invitation to not forget my things before I vacate the town. Inside is any small number of contraband, none of which concerns me but the lancing sword I've grown to care for like a friend. It stands up against a table, straight-backed with good posture and gleaming with tales and rumors. I leave without hurry. Together we walk down the road past the shocked eyes of many, and across the fields to my cathedral of trees.
I hear the commotion at the gate a league behind me. The shocked questions and the hurried answers. As I step back into the bramblebushes and into the shadows of the wood, the noises of civilization are drowned by the choir of nature. The crackle of trees reaching for sunlight, the hushed silence of wind. But the songbirds, they no longer sing for me.
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