Echoes of a Promise

‘I will find you.’

A promise. A broken promise. A curse.

The words echoed in his head, building to a crescendo until they matched the frantic scream in which they had first been spoken, so far away, and so long ago.

He awoke with the practiced stillness of a fugitive as the first rays of dawn stung his eyes. He moved slowly, edging to the ridgeline and rising to his elbows, careful not to dislodge the treacherously loose scree. Hungrier eyes might also be watching the horizon.

An hour passed under the boiling fury of the dawn sun, though he had not stirred even to swig down some of the brackish water from the bottle he carried secreted under his tattered clothes.

At last he was satisfied that the valley below was clear. The Hunters of the Consortium were pitiless trackers, even citizens of the Free States knew to keep a wide berth, they would take a freedman as easily as a refugee, the work camps of the fledgling empire were never full after all. The Hunters, however, held back the worst of their spite for those who escaped, a slave brand was as good as a death sentence in the Ashlands, no citizen would harbour those who bore the mark, for it was known that it did not matter if the Hunters returned their quarry alive, only that the promise of retribution was spread far and wide.

He slumped against a rock and wiped grey dust and sweat from his face, eagerly pressing the bottle to his lips and taking grateful swallows.

It looked like the Consortium’s hounds had tired of their prey, after a night of excess they would have slipped off pre-dawn, loading the bodies onto their sleds and stealing a march on the ruthless sun, hurrying to reach the nascent capital city of the Consortium to collect their bounties.

He knew he could have stopped them.

They had come from the western mouth of the barren valley, distinguishable at a glance by their tireless, loping strides and the sleds they bore. The six of them, all men, grime-coated and feral-looking, had stopped a hundred paces below the ridgeline at an overhang just above the valley floor. They sat crouched on their haunches, chattering excitedly in the pidgin tongue of those who roamed the Ashlands, gesticulating to the far eastern end of the valley, and once a decision had been made, they quieted, drawing their grey cloaks around them to blend in to the rocks around them, settling in to state of tense readiness.

Ambush.

He’d been resting in the shade of a warped tree when they arrived and knew that any sudden movement might give his position away. He mimicked their stillness, not daring to shift his weight even when his muscles started cramping.

After an eternity of silence, a grey sinuous mass had manifested in the hazy distance. Cautiously it crept onwards through the valley until it resolved into human figures. Slow and shuffling apparitions, he knew they could only be refugees, another desperate group of outcasts risking their lives to flee the war-torn south and make their way through Consortium stalking grounds to reach the Free States in the far north. He hadn’t been able to make out their features but he knew the type well: lined and drawn faces, bodies a mesh of scars and wounds not healed, a testament to a life not easily led. It would have been like looking at his own reflection.

He had sensed rather than seen the change in the men below, a thrill that rent the silence, the scent of blood on the wind.

He could have warned them. At that distance a shout would have echoed through the pass and had the refugees running. Or a bullet fired into the air, though precious to waste. He could have shot at the men instead, they were below him, unprepared for an attack and likely unwilling to fight a gun with knives and spears.

But fear stilled his hands. In this new world the strong preyed upon the weak, but with their barbarity they kept civilisation a glowing ember, a species on the brink of extinction yet triumphant, all due to toil and submission.

He remembered a whispered plea in the fetid dark of the work camp’s sleeping quarters, moments before betrayal had cut short hope of escape.

‘Promise me you won’t do anything stupid, you can be a hero, or a survivor, but not both. Survive – and come find me.’

So he lay there, unmoving, watching the dozen figures march ever closer towards their fate, their faces covered, indistinguishable in their pitifulness. His pulse pounding in his ears as he cursed himself for his weakness, but he had a promise to keep - an oath sworn as rough hands had torn them apart and separated them for good. He watched, and did nothing.

For Her.

‘I’ll find you’, he whispered to himself through tears as he lay.

A promise, a curse, an excuse.

The small band of stragglers didn’t have a chance, they were tired, weak from the burning heat and had long ago lost the survival instinct borne of hope. When the Hunters sprang the men and women of the group milled about like sheep, clinging to each other and tripping in the scree. The men were downed first, then the women, beaten and bound with rough cords by steady, practiced hands.

He had ducked his head down from the ridgeline then, he didn’t need to witness the ambush, he knew from harsh experience what it looked like. He closed his eyes and thanked God that She would never travel with such easy prey. Travel light, travel alone. He had made her repeat it endlessly.

The night had been long, the Hunters raised tents and lit a fire when the sun set and feasted on the scant supplies the refugees had been carrying, the prisoners received nothing. Afterwards a cacophony of noise marked the moment merriment turned to savagery as they unleashed themselves upon the prisoners. Chilling screams told him that they had found the slave marks on at least two of the prisoners, marks he carried himself on the back of his hand. They wouldn’t be joining the others in their sad procession to the camps, they had found their freedom, in a way, their spirits soaring off to the green hills, though what was left of them in this world would make the journey on the wooden planks of the sleds.

Sleep had been a long time coming, even after the screams stopped and silence had settled over the camp.

He shook himself from his reverie as the last drops of water trickled down his throat. Time to be moving. East, he decided, the Hunters had returned the way they came judging from the sled tracks, east would lead him away from them. His map showed a settlement that way, the skeleton of one at least - the refugees must have passed through it not two days ago, and where people walked there was always a Wall, and perhaps another clue as to where She could be found.

He hefted the bag around his shoulders and scrambled down to the valley floor. Long strides kicked up little clouds as he examined the terrain around him.

It had probably been a river once, pure and clean, water clear enough to drink without having to be strained through cloth, long ago, before the mountain exploded and covered the skies in darkness and the lands in ash, before the crops failed, before the hunger and the sickness ripped humankind apart, before…

He shook his head. It was ending anyway. His grandparents had taught him the stories of the Old World, the greed of the few, the suffering of the many, the excesses and the consequences that were ignored, then the fearful clamour as the tides rose and the rush to heal the damage all too late. Gaia had already been in her death throes, sickened and weak, the explosion that led to The Fall was her final revenge, a swan song of pure malice and show of last, fading power.

They talked of new life now, rumours whispered between slaves and guards alike, of green hills, trees and food that sprouted in abundance, high up in the north where the ash lay thinnest on the soil and enriched rather than suffocated it.

Lies, he was sure, but he envied their hope.

***

It was closer to three days by the time he reached the settlement, abundance of caution had led him to walk the route slowly, stopping frequently, watching for the tell-tale dust clouds of approaching sleds. This settlement marked the extent of the Consortium’s reach though, he was beyond the Hunter’s snares now.

The wind, however, was chasing him.

The usually soft breeze had been stiffened by a strong, steady pressure as he had trudged onwards, he felt it nudging against his back, racing him to the Wall. If he didn’t reach it before the storm came then any trace of Her would be lost forever. He ran on, weaving through the ruins of the village. The ash was falling thicker by the moment, a harbinger of the brutal wind to come. It would be the killing kind, strong enough to fill the air with noxious ash and flay skin with grit. The Wall must be close though, it was always in the centre.

Another right, then a left, through the alley – and there. He had erupted into the centre of the village, free of the surrounding buildings the Wall stood proudly alone, the settlement’s chief landmark, beautifully cut from dark stone and sombre-looking.

A Memory Wall.

They said that in the Old World the Wall would have had the names of the dead, soldiers lost in their many internecine wars, lives gone forever. Now the Wall was covered in different names, lives that could be reunited - directions to meeting places, descriptions of missing persons and messages to those who wandered – the words all screaming the same message: ‘come find me!’, the same words, in different places, on many Walls. Words that were blown away every storm.

He ran, tattered pages were already ripping free from the nails that held them, filling the air. Panicking he grabbed every letter he saw, every note and written plea, the wind whipping him as he worked.

He was halfway across the Wall when he saw the glint, the tiniest glimmer beneath the grime, the reflection of light off gold, a bauble useless in a society that had no need for finery. A heart-shaped locket. His heart-shaped locket, given freely, as a promise to return. He dropped the other letters and sprinted through the haze to where it hung on a nail, along with a note, a couple of days old at the most. He tore it away and read the words greedily.

It was Her, it was Her words, but as his eyes traced them down the page, his hands became numb, phrases burned into his brain like blinding lights –

‘…gone west to…’, ‘…must pass through the valley…’, ‘…with a group of refugees…’, ‘…not to travel alone, but it’s been so long…’

The valley.

She had been there.

Close enough to touch.

Close enough to save.

With a slave tattoo, amongst the Hunters.

An echoing scream.

The note flew from nerveless fingers.

It was only moments before he straightened and steeled his resolve. He would begin his search again, maybe this time it would lead him through green hills and peaceful waters, he thought with a smile. He undid the clasp holding his cloak to him, the wind battered and stung but his mind was far away and it felt like only the gentlest of raindrops. The rag covering his face whipped away with a snap, and as he let the wind take him, he whispered to the gathering dark -

‘I will find you.’