Into the Dark Pt. 03

"I'll see if there's anything in here we can use to stop the bleeding."

"Alright, I'll go and try to clean myself up in that stream."

I knelt by the water of the stream and began to wash the sweat and blood from my hands and face, looking around as I did. The inn was surrounded by moonlit forests and a road ran past it and disappeared into the trees in either direction. The stream I washed in was broad, shallow and slow-moving. Shapes that seemed to be some sort of white fish moved about in its deeper reaches. I looked down at the gently rippling reflection of my unfamiliar face. It was a stranger's face. Then my gaze followed the stream into the distance and I saw what seemed to be the moonlit shimmer of a distant bay.

Is that where I had come from? Had I stepped off a ship onto a lonely dock and followed a trail up to the inn? Or was I a traveller resting at the inn as I passed along the road? I thought about what the rat had said about my fighting ability. Both the rat and I seemed to have outclassed our attackers with the sort of skill that was probably the result of long training or experience. The most audacious and unexpected swings of my blade seemed to come naturally, and I could predict my opponent's actions long before they happened. Perhaps even before they'd thought of it themselves. It struck me as odd that although I'd lost my memory, I still remembered how to fight. It was strange as well because I didn't feel like much of a hero. Whatever bravery I'd had as a warrior hadn't been preserved along with my swordsmanship. Or maybe it was that in my past life I'd been a great warrior who just pretended to be brave while inwardly feeling like a coward.

"Admiring your reflection in the stream?"

I turned to the rat and laughed. "I was just thinking. Although, yeah.." I turned back to my reflection. ".. I'm spending some time getting used to my face as well. I suppose I'm not that bad looking. It could be worse I guess."

"Lucky you," he murmured, gazing at his own reflection. "There's something about your face that's familiar to me," he said, "... but I can't say the same for my own. Waking up and discovering that you're a rat is a bemusing experience."

I laughed and he threw a handful of rags onto the river stones beside me, keeping one strip that he began winding around a cut near my shoulder. The feeling of his big, gentle claws on my skin was strange, to say the least.

"I think it's fair to say that we're not welcome here anymore," he said. "The innkeeper thinks that we're to blame for the attack, and who can blame him? He also thinks that there will be another attack if we stay here. He only let me back into the inn on the promise that we'd be leaving soon." There were a few moments of silence as he tightened the bandage. "Where we should be heading towards I don't know," he said. "None of the people here know who we are, or who that girl was, other than the fact that she was drinking and arguing with us before she fled."

He helped pull my shirt over my head and began examining my wounds again, before he picked out a longer rag to wind around my chest. "I suppose she's involved in our loss of memory in some way," he said.

I nodded. "I suppose so. Did you ask about this Resistance and the ... Tyrant?" He shook his head as he wound the bandage around me, "I didn't think of it."

I stared at my reflection in the stream. "Well, it sounds like we're involved in that in some way," I said. "That girl - whoever she was - sounds like the sort of person that'd be friends with someone called the Tyrant," I mused, a smile returning to my face, "so perhaps we're a part of this Resistance." There was silence again as he checked the bandages one last time. "Supposedly there are towns north and south of here along the road," he said. "We could go there and see if anyone recognises us, and we can try to find out a bit about the Resistance. Maybe we can get in contact with them."

Ludicrously I'd started shaking again while he was speaking. I tried breathing slowly and deeply. "Funnily enough these wounds didn't really hurt until you started bandaging them", I said. "Maybe the adrenaline is wearing off." He left a comforting claw on my shoulder and was about to say something but we were interrupted by sounds behind us. We both looked over our shoulder to see activity in the inn's stables. It looked like ponies were being harnessed to a cart.

The rat turned back to me. "I thought about food for the journey while I was in there. Luckily for us, when I looked inside my bag I found a pouch of coins, so I bought this." He pulled out a lump of cheese and what seemed to be a flat loaf of unleavened bread. "That should keep us going for a little while. I also found this in my bag," and he handed me something else. I turned it over in my hands. It was a miniature book of extremely elegant design.

The title read: "The Pilgrimage of Decia." I flicked it open and read the first page aloud. "Dear Brothers and Sisters in Faith" it began. "Here begins the story of my pilgrimage to the sacred mahogany mountains of Cyrai, from my modest birthplace in a barracks in the Valley of Wyv." I continued reading it aloud for a few more minutes, but then I stopped reading as both of our ears twitched at the sound of something coming from the pile of bodies. We both listened for a few moments and then we went over to investigate.

A couple of the corpses lying in the pile were inn patrons but most were the bodies of the attackers, and physically they were quite a bit different. They had pale, almost translucent skin and an elongated face that suggested the shape of a muzzle or a snout. They had wide rows of sharp teeth, and their eyes were like dark holes with nothing in them beside the hint of a metallic glint. Although most were about the size of the average person, a couple of them were were quite a bit larger and more heavily built than both the rat and myself. Their hands were large, webbed and cruelly clawed.

Later I was to learn that these attackers were a breed known as fen walkers or man fishers. They lived in subterranean caves in swampland, and would use their long claws, as well as hooked spears and barbed blades to drag unsuspecting victims into the mire to be drowned and eaten. It was said that one of the last things that their victims saw was rows of drowned corpses, tied to the bottom of the mire, to be consumed later by the fen walkers.

The rat and I peered into this pile of corpses. One of the fen walkers seemed to be murmuring something. I leaned in, pressed my blade gently against his throat and listened.

His face seemed to soften into mocking recognition as he saw my face. "The screaming maiden..." he whispered, "... will return to..." and his voice trailed away. I pushed the blade harder against his throat but he didn't respond. His breathing was coming in short, sharp pants.

"Why did you attack the inn?" I demanded, but his quick breaths had ended, and before I'd finished the sentence, I knew that he was dead.