Shadows on the Plains

Part 4 of Doy of the Marshes

On the dawn of the fourth day, Doy felt energized. He might be in human lands, but he hadn't seen a human yet, and the area looked quite safe. To the north and south, faint on the horizon, he could barely make out the shapes of two human border forts. The boy thought that those couldn't cause him any trouble, how would they see him, a small hwblin when he could hardly spot the castles? Those castles, though, supplemented their watchtowers with patrols, and the land before him was beautiful for cavalry: unspoiled plains.

Doy wasn't aware of them until midday. By that time he was already on the open plains, nothing like his native marshes. To him the land appeared endless, featureless, almost the calm sea they had been told about. Only the wooded mountains, yonder west, marked a distant boundary to the world. Yet, anybody grown up among goblins constantly searched for places to hide. There was rock, a bit further a way a lump of three trees, bushes, and among them a stream that had subtly cut a furrow in the earth. It was there, behind the whitened skeleton of a horse, that Doy hoped not to be found.

For he had seen them, their shapes cut on the horizon, riding slowly. These were humans, in his mind brandishing spears that he couldn't yet see, their faces filled with anger and greed. And they kept getting closer and closer, as if their route passed precisely on his place. He considered his choices. Running was the worst he could do, just staying where he was wouldn't be any wiser. He then thought of sitting down casually by the river, just a kid doing kid things, but if the humans asked, what could he say? He couldn't even speak their strange tongue. There was one thing he could do, crawl slowly out of the riverbed and into the bushes he had seen before, one hundred feet away. The riders were still far away; he might make it.

Wet was the grass as he crawled on it, cold mud made way into his pants, but that didn't bother him an inch. Far away, in the distance, the human riders kept their way, slowly, slowly getting closer. When he reached the bushes, he seized their shelter and laid as low as you could make, his cape extended over his body, the hood covering everything but a sleet for his eyes.

Just as slowly as they came, the human riders went away. Now an excited Doy could see them. Indeed, they held those long spears that stories told of; indeed, their bodies were covered in iron that shone whenever a beam of light got through the ceiling of clouds. Had they'd found him, he'd become another lost little goblin, one who would never make it back home.

Nothing was lost that, nothing but time, for Doy kept very still for hours to go, until the humans were so far away. He could only make a few miles when the sun fell behind those giant black mountains, the Crows, they called them. Doy considered making camp then but decided to keep on for the night. The humans would be back the next morning, he needed to make as much way as he could. And so he kept on, ever more so tired, for he was a twelve years boy, alone and afraid, guided by the lonely stars and the distant howls of wolves.

On the fifth day, Dawn, grown up into morning, would've allowed himself to fall down and sleep. Still there was no shelter to call, and humans could be around, so he kept on and on under the soft rain, ever south and south until, by midday, he spotted the beginnings of a trail. There was a route that shepherds followed, unbeknownst to him, that was one of the trails that Count Teddus followed many times while a slave of the humans.

And that trail he'd followed for it went to Cadday, the place where his mission would be completed.

End of Part 4