But the captain seemed completely disinterested in talking to me at all, except when absolutely necessary, and rebuffed most attempts at conversation. So long as I was paid, I wasn’t particularly bothered by this, but it was queer, and more than that, had the effect of stretching the hours out interminably.
Sitting inside the wagon, I often looked out the back. Except for the cloud of dust and absence of horses, it was identical to the front-an endless trail surrounded by an endless expanse of tall green grass, rustling as far as the eye could see. We couldn’t have been more alone, and it felt as if we were truly the last travelers on Earth, doomed to travel these steppes together forever.
The next day passed exactly as the previous day had. The only real deviation in our journey was that Lloi was absent. She didn’t return in the middle of the night. She didn’t return at all.
The following day, after our usual morning rituals and preparations, Braylar summoned me to join him. When I took my seat, he glanced at me briefly. “You never look well-rested. I’m beginning to think that you don’t have it in you.”
I didn’t bother countering that I slept just fine when I wasn’t trapped on a wagon in the wilderness with the least loquacious man in the known world.
We sat in our customary silence for a time when Braylar finally said, “Have you grieved, Arki?”
I didn’t answer right away, equally surprised he was asking me a question and uncertain what he expected as a response.
“No? I thought as much. You haven’t lived until you’ve grieved. Death, life, together, the same. And if you’ve only experienced life you’re only half-alive. Of course, there are many kinds of grief. When we’re betrayed, when a lover leaves us in the middle of the night, when our fortunes overturn and dump us penniless in a ditch. Anywhere there’s loss, there’s a little grief. But they’re minor, and quick to disappear. We can take a new lover, take revenge on our betrayer, take the fortune of someone else. The losses can be recouped, and this is what makes these griefs minor, fleeting, inconsequential.
“But when you lose something that can never be replaced, and more particularly, someone, then you’ll know grief, true grief. The kind that tortures and warps and threatens to destroy, the kind that turns your insides to ash, that draws you toward madness or your own death. This grief will never leave you, ever. It will change shape, and if you survive its initial ravages, it will subdue, but it will never leave, periodically springing up again to catch you unaware with a new fierceness, like a plague that lies dormant for years only to return again with renewed ferocity. You’ll never fully escape it. For your sake, I hope you experience this grief soon. You’ll be that much closer to living a complete life.”
After that happy outburst, he lapsed into silence again. I was about to return to the wagon when he pointed out a figure on the horizon. At first I was worried it might be a Grass Dog, but his smile told me it was only his Grass Dog. When Lloi finally reined in next to us, Braylar said, “Report. What have you seen?”
She jerked a thumb in the direction she came from. “More than seen. Found.”
When she didn’t immediately expound, Braylar sighed. “Yes?”
“Best see it for yourself. I could spend the time telling you about it, but without presupposing I know what you’ll say or do, I know you’ll be wanting to just see it yourself anyway. So, you want me to lead you there?”
“How far away is this find of yours-should we follow on horse?”
“Horse be quicker, sure as spit. But seeing as to what I saw, I wouldn’t be leaving the wagon untended, Captain Noose, not if it were my wagon. Which it weren’t, of course. Just saying.”
Braylar seemed to be balancing between amusement and annoyance. “Very well, I’ll heed your cryptic and garbled advice. Wagon it is.”
Lloi’s horse trotted ahead of us. Braylar snapped the reins and had the horses moving at a fairly brisk pace-we rumbled over the ground, rocking as we went. Still, Lloi’s horse was quicker, even with its short legs, and she maintained enough distance between us that she was only a silhouette on the horizon, stopping on occasion to ensure the wagon didn’t fall too far behind.
Finally, Lloi stopped and got down off her horse. Braylar looked at me and said, “Pay attention. I believe this might be something worth recording.” Then he hopped off the wagon and it rocked gently on its springs. I got caught on a nail getting down, nearly tearing my tunic, and by the time my feet were on the ground, Braylar was striding after Lloi.
I hurried to catch up, but there was no need-they stopped a short distance away before a large area where the grass had been trampled down. That’s when I noticed the stench. Two odors intertwined, instantly recognizable to anyone who’s paid a visit to the butcher-meat and death.
As I approached, I saw something past Lloi’s shoulder, rising up above the grass. One of the largest creatures I’d ever seen was lying on its side before us. Easily as big as our wagon, perhaps bigger still.
It had short, squat legs, so that its belly must have swung very low to the ground, but now that belly was torn open, its thick, tangled, ropy innards strewn along with a great deal of dried blood across the flattened grass.
After a moment, Braylar and Lloi walked on, but never having seen anything like this before, I couldn’t help circling and taking account. Most of its body was covered in bulbous scales of dark gray, almost charcoal, interspersed with strange tufts of stiff hair. It had a short tail, a shorter neck, and a wedge-shaped head. Its mouth was agape, huge purple tongue lolling over knobby teeth, eyes like small black stones still open under a broad, bony ridge. Large flies scattered from the open wound at its belly as I came close, buzzing their protest. Its hide, more of an armor, really, was marked with white scars or punctures, particularly around the neck and head.
I looked up, and when I didn’t see my companions right away, there was a flash of panic before I noticed the tops of their heads twenty feet away. I walked over quickly and found another scene of carnage, much more dreadful than the first.
There was a chariot upended, comprised mostly of stiff grass. Harnessed to the front was a dead dog at least as big as Lloi’s pony, its thick mottled fur caked in a wide splatter of blood. Its throat had been torn out. I imagined what kind of creature could kill a dog this big, and in such gruesome, efficient fashion, and I couldn’t stymie a shiver.
Most of the harness straps disappeared underneath the dog, but it appeared there had been another dog pulling the chariot, though if it was in the vicinity, I didn’t see it. I wondered if that’s what Lloi and Braylar were inspecting and walked in their direction, suddenly wishing I’d stayed with the wagon.
Braylar and Lloi were squatting before a dead man, disemboweled from sternum to crotch, his bloated guts slung across his waist and pooling in the grass on either side.
I turned away, gagging, struggling to keep my last meal in my stomach. I tried to think on something else, anything else-beautiful flowers, a rolling brook, pen and ink-and the nausea nearly passed until I remembered I ate dried goat that morning, and then there was no stopping it-my stomach roiled and heaved. I took several steps back towards the chariot and vomited into the grass.
I dreaded Braylar’s ridicule and didn’t want to embarrass myself by spitting up bile, but I also didn’t want to walk alone back to the wagon. Whatever assaulted the Grass Dogs was still out here somewhere. And so, once I was sure my knees had wobbled their last, I approached again, reluctantly.
Braylar had just finished asking a question.
She pointed. “Over there.”