Chapter 23: The Old Man Of The Hills

Nirmo pointed to the north with his spear. "Yannis's domain."

Mak followed his guide to the edge of the cliff and leaned on his halberd. The landscape Nirmo pointed to was an endless sprawl of dark hills under a heavy grey sky. It looked devoid of life, though now and then it seemed a hill would undulate or shift, as he had seen in some of the poorer homes near the steppes where roaches crawled under children's blankets. He looked at Nirmo, searching for signs of tension in the stone pygmy's indomitable expression, but Nirmo's face was as unyielding as his suit iron platemaille.

"I've heard no good things spoken of this place," Mak said, angry he'd been taken here. He accepted Nirmo's reluctance to give information as they passed through lands he'd never before heard of, narrowly dodging harm and worse as they traversed steep mountain passes, crossed tarns in makeshift boats, navigated dense forests where the Arun's light could scarce be seen, and fended off strange beasts that Mak did not know existed. There were foul creatures in the lands west, close to the border. The creatures they saw often were a thing other than animal, yet not of Fiend kind, according to Nirmo and Seeker Athla, a Sage of Nessus who'd been chosen to come. He was not the one who spoke with him. That one was tasked with watching over his family while he was away. His matron was kind indeed. Also in their group were two stone pygmies who never spoke or removed their helms, and carried strange looking iron boxes engraved with runes, and another Sage named Seeker Ixix. He was a small, furtive thing that never seemed frightened. When once they were pressed to defend themselves from a pack of malformed grubs with the faces of dustmen beneath their translucent skin, Seeker Ixix slew them all with his clawed toes and tore out their brains with his hands, then sat and made a fire as if naught had happened.

Seeker Athla was a peaceful soul who entertained Mak on their journey with glyphs and drawings, and would emit a soft, crooning noise that helped Mak to sleep. It failed to help him here on the doorstep of Yannis, the eldest of Fiends.

"The worst creatures live here," Mak said. Nirmo sat across from him, his countenance stone still, even against the dancing shadows of their campfire. It was dimday, under a sky that faded from indigo to grey, and beyond that was the Mending Wall, an omni presence that warned without a word. Mak could no longer deny to himself that he was afraid, and that he missed his wife and children. He hoped Nikinara was behaving herself.

Nirmo looked over the cliff's edge and poked his nose upward. "They're all over there."

"Why would we travel to Yannis's domain?".

Nirmo shrugged. "We stopped here, didn't we?".

Mak growled slightly. "How am I serving Princess Phosphora out here?"

Nirmo held his skewer over the fire for a moment, then bit the last bit of meat off the monkey leg he'd been gnawing on. "She battles against the Fiends. This here is a haven for their kind. It all seems clear and ordinary to me."

"Ordinary to send a small band of Mortals to besiege the land of Yannis, King of Fiends?".

Nirmo scrunched his nose and shook his head. His dark beard seemed to glow in the light of the flames. "He's more of a warden, really."

Mak wondered over that statement. "Are the hills a prison? I saw some of them move."

"Well," Nirmo through the monkey bone into the fire, "not all of them are actually hills, persay. And there's the Old Man of course."

"And Yannis."

"There see, that's why I say he's more of a warden. You see, a king stands tall and sits on a throne, plain to be seen. But Yannis, he's been even more a recluse than Arun for the last six hundred years. Some of milady's types say he's dead, or run off. As I reckon, the Old Man is watching over the place."

"And how dangerous is the Old Man, that Yannis should leave him as his steward?".

Nirmo laughed softly at that. "We plan to give him a wide berth. Though," he reached into the sabretache that hung from his belt, "this should help, in case he does approach us." He produced a large, blue jewel that faintly glowed. "A token from Princess Phosphora. The Old Man knows what her family can do when roused, even the little one."

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Mak thought of his pups. "Princess Sulphina."

"Aye. The precious begotten. Only one of her kind, they say. Though I can't believe there isn't another like her on the other side. Or somethin' similar."

"Similar?"

"Well, the Pale Queen must have gotten lonely being away from her king all these years. She may have had a suitor come a' calling from etherium. Titany's got more of the Mighty roaming around than tartary, after all."

"But the firmament keeps them out."

Nirmo nodded and shrugged. "For the most part."
Mak sighed, then lay down and curled into a ball.

"Don't fret," said Nirmo. "Our task is plainly laid out. You'll learn each bit when you need, and I expect you'll be clever enough to figure the most important bit out yourself. Milady chose you for reasons. Best not to doubt her."

The indigo sky swirled with airy clouds, and the dense hue above them thickened. A single red star could be seen, and it reminded Mak of home. He chastised himself for being so soft. There was a time when he would be away for years and hold up better than this. Of course, he had fewer children then, and his love for Unakna had only grown. But still, he was the Iron Dog captain, and chosen by his matron for a vital duty.

He dozed for a while, drifting through a dream of home. He woke fitfully, uncomfortable with the depth of dimday here. At times he felt as if he could see a silver orb in the western sky, but he knew the Pale Queen's crown was much too distant for him to see. Eventually he felt sleep overtake him, and when he woke he was cold. The fire had died a long time ago, and his companions were nowhere to be seen. He felt more frightened than angry, and rose quickly, hurriedly gathering his gear, then searched for his companions' tracks. Athla's feet were strangely shaped, so he looked for his prints first, finding nothing. He then looked for Nirmo's wide, flat prints, and again found nothing. There was no scent, no scat, no dropped tool, scrap of clothing, or even a broken twig to tell of their passage. Then he heard Athla scream, a terrible sound. He scampered down a stairway embedded in the nearest cliff. It was broken and narrow, zig zagging like a bolt of lightning.

He'd never traversed anything so treacherous. Many times he almost fell, a few times he did, landing hard a long ways down, but he kept up his descent until his feet touched dirt, then ran madly towards the hills. He saw a grey mist that took the place of the sky. Like a blanket over a body at a wake, it hung over the whole undulating sea of hills. Mak ran hard, sometimes on all fours, following the echo of Athla's scream. The mist grew darker as he climbed a particular hill with grass so pale it was almost grey. Shards of broken blades cut him, and as he drew closer to the top of the hill the screams grew faint, until all he heard was a wet, sickly laugh. Atop the hill was a stooped figure in a robe that looked much like the turf of the hill. Mak felt a sudden fear, and with it a realization of where he'd run to. He turned his head to look back and felt it snap around forward. He yelped, then tried to turn it back again, his mouth cracking open from the strain as his neck muscles betrayed him.

The voice sounded old and hollow, but there was an echo to it that brought a memory to Mak of a prisoner kept overlong. A clacking sound sent a shiver down Mak's spine. It was wet and slapping, and always an instant behind the closing of the Old Man's teeth. Mak was standing in front him him now, straining with all his will to turn back, but he could not move. Then, with a punishing sense of awareness, he woke, this time in earnest, and was standing at the very place he saw in his dream. The worried shouts of Nirmo and Athla were long behind him.

It seemed to Mak that he was no longer standing within the bounds of the world. The fog around the hill was now a wispy coating over a solid iron dome, and the crown of the hill the only land there was. The fog swirled as water does overhead to a drowning man. There was no sign of bending knees within the Old Man's robe when he moved toward Mak. He slid forward, and beneath him the ground was undisturbed. Bent over almost double, his head was no higher than Mak's sternum. He looked upward slowly, his ancient bones creaking, and only an impossibly wrinkled mouth and chin showed beneath his hood. The white hairs of his beard dangled as heavily is roots, and when his lips parted it seemed the space between them was vas, and his teeth were much larger than they should have been. The clacking sound was loud now, Mak thought he heard a large, beastly tongue sloshing around behind the pale one he saw. The Old Man licked his shriveled lips as he spoke.

"Give me..." he raised a spindly arm. His hand poked out of his dagged sleeve, one finger extended, its nail a needle thin claw, the others stunted and malformed, the smallest barely a lump that wriggled under the skin of his palm. "Give me your salt."

The finger touched Mak's abdomen and he felt his blood turn cold. As his body went completely numb, resistant to all his panicked efforts to move, the mist receded and he saw an army of misshapen creatures rising from the hide of the pulsating hills. The sky was now growing blood red, veined with thick tendrils of black. The Old Man now held both his deformed hands against Mak's chest.

"I need your salt."

Mak felt pain lance through his chest and down into his kidneys, then his heart began to thunder inside him. He felt as if it were about to burst open. Soon the pain in his body was unbearable, made worse by his inability to make any sound. He was completely paralyzed, feeling with amplified awareness the pain of his flesh being torn open. He rolled his eyes downward to see, regretting it instantly. The Old Man had torn his stomach open and was slowly pressing his head into him. As his hood bunched up against Mak's body, Mak saw the wrinkled skin of the Old Man's neck moving endlessly inward with the wafting motion of a snake.

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