Page 11 of The Blight of Hollowmire

“Of course,” Bjorn replies, a little too quickly.

“Of course,” I echo.

The bench creaks loudly beneath uncomfortably shifting bodies, the lie evident in the charged silence.

“Good rations?” I press, unable to resist my hunger for the truth. I won’t put it past Arden to have these young men make do with scraps out of detached disinterest, but if Valehar cannot even feed its armies, things have become more dire than I’ve feared. “More than hardtack and salted fish?”

“Aye,” intones the youngest. Before he can stop himself or think better of it, he swallows and says, “It doesn’t—” He freezes, color flooding his face.

“It doesn’t what?” Millie asks sharply. I cut her a look. We both know what the lad means to say—what the older ones will not. Has Arden instructed them to hide the state of things in Valehar? Does he not think I can see with my own eyes how gaunt and worn these men look when they should be in the prime of their youth? Anger cracks through me like a whip, and I must force myself to exhale slowly lest I threaten our momentary truce.

Bjorn shoots him a warning look, but I gesture to him to continue.

“Let him speak.”

The boy grips his cup, knuckles turning white. “It doesn’t satisfy. The feeling doesn’t stay,” he mutters. “The food just… sits, like a stone in the belly. And before you can take another bite, it’s as if what you’ve already eaten has vanished from your gut.”

As if summoned by his description, my own stomach drops to the floor. It is as I feared—the plague that has stretched the breadth of the kingdom has breached the castle walls and now none are spared. Everyone that finds their way to my boundary gate describes it the same way: a belly full of nothing. Eating and eating, with nothing remaining in the gut. Nothing in the limbs. Nothing in the marrow. Nothing assuages the hunger, and nothing seems to nourish the body. At first, we all thought it was a curse on the people of the kingdom. Only recently have we learned that it’s a curse on the crops.

The curse leaves a certain look on a man’s face, even before the hollows of his cheeks and eyes deepen. There’s an unease beneath the skin, a tightness at the mouth, a constant flexing of the fingers against the abdomen as though kneading pain out of it, and these boys have that look. Even Bjorn, who tries hardest to hide it.

I nod, as though this is new information and not something I have seen in every hollow-eyed merchant and exhausted, trembling mother who has staggered up my lane this past couple of years.

The first time someone came, it was at the late dusk in midsummer, when everyone should have plenty to eat. The well-dressed man—a merchant, I’d guessed—shuffled up to the gate, the hood of his cloak pulled low, with enough coin to buy a loaf of bread, a dozen eggs, and six apples—proudly insisting that he didn’t need charity. The second came a week after that—this time a mother carrying a sleeping child with arms as thin as reeds. After that, they came in twos and threes and then in quiet, desperate lines.

I’ve been feeding them for the better part of a year now, and still they hesitate at the boundary marker that separates my land from Valehar. They’re all afraid, as though charity or starvation itself might be treason. Then again, knowing Arden, it might be.

Since they started coming, I’ve had to produce more than what I ever planned to. I’ve sold relics of my old life to buy more seed, more chickens, more sheep. I’ve expanded my fields as far as I can, pressing right up against the Verge and praying that I’m not angering whatever dark things live inside. I sell when I must, give when I can, and turn no one away unless my own stores run thin enough to endanger the winter.

Fortunately, the apples in the north orchard have gone early this year, and the wheat this summer yielded thick heads heavy with grain. My soil remains untouched by the curse thus far because I am outside the boundary of Valehar, but there’s no telling how long it will stay that way. I wake often these nights, sticky with sweat, heart hammering with the unease that something ill-fated creeps toward my own lands.

When the soldiers are all but licking the crumbs from the serving platters, Millie clears the table like she is removing weapons from untried, unsteady hands. We exchange pleasantries and enough news about Valehar that I can surmise enough from what isn’t said, and the portrait it paints is dire indeed. They sit longer than necessary, reluctant to rise, reluctant perhaps to return to a place where bread fills the mouth but not the body. Or maybe they’re afraid of what Arden will do when they return without me.

“So, you’ll tell him I wasn’t here,” I say to Bjorn.

He hesitates, caught between promising to lie for me and protecting his fellow soldiers. “We’ll tell him… what seems wise, depending on his mood.”

Millie throws me a dark look and bustles back into the kitchen, muttering to herself.

They leave before dusk, their horses better fed and watered than when they arrived. I watch until the last of them disappears over the rise by the river. The sky hangs low and bruised, threatening rain.

I bring Freja into her stall, and she lows plaintively. As I see to her comfort, Magnar leans over and nudges my shoulder. We both stare after the group of soldiers, armor still too shiny in the storm cloud-choked sunset.

“Yes,” I say quietly. “He’ll come himself.”

There are a couple weeks of peace in the interim, and I can almost pretend everything is as it should be. Crops are fit for harvest, the autumn planting is underway, Millie is hard at work preserving all she can because the dread that nauseates me day in and day out says more will come for food this winter than ever before. Hunger knows no season, and I have no respite.

When the rasp and clatter of another distant arrival comes, it’s with the steady rhythm of iron-banded wheels rolling over the deep ruts in the road. There’s no clanking of awkward young soldiers in ill-fitting armor this time—it’s with the foreboding surety of fate.

I’m out walking the far boundary of the field that butts up against the Verge when I hear it first, and then see it. The late afternoon sun spears through the gathering purple storm clouds like some kind of false hope about the inevitable arrival of a man I could’ve gone the rest of my life without seeing.

The wheat I managed to plant three days prior has not yet broken soil, but the rows lie straight and true beneath the dark loam. Magnar recognizes the sound before I do, but he doesn’t tug at his yoke or offer so much as a nicker. He simply waits, ears turning to catch whatever scraps of sound he can, his tail flicking as if the incoming guest is but a biting fly.

I rest my palm against the fence post I’ve just repaired and feel the wood grain beneath my skin, solid and splintered. Before I begrudgingly turn toward the rise, I tighten the iron bracket another quarter turn and hope this one will hold against whatever monstrous thing apparently broke the last one.

The carriage that crests the hill is deep scarlet and lacquered ebony, which I found elegant when the king—my king—made use of it. Now, however, it strikes me as garish—the color of blood spilled across black soil. The horses are so well matched they might be two sets of twins, their harnesses jingling with too much ornament for a dusty road on the outskirts of the kingdom. The riders flanking the carriage are a far cry from the youthful company in hand-me-down armor—they are Arden’s personal guard, and some of the most cruel and efficient killers I’ve ever had the misfortune of serving with.

Bile rises all the way up my gullet and I suck down measured breaths to quell the unpleasant, unbidden wave of emotions. I grip the wood of the fence hard enough to push splinters deep beneath the skin into the flesh of my palm, and the pain grows from a dull prick to a sharp bite that finally distracts me from my anger.