When the Hay'tisan Came

The hay'tisan were grey. Their skin was grey. Their hair was grey. Their eyes were grey. The fires they seemed to weave from thin air were not grey. The blazing destruction they scattered about the city with waves of their hands came in more colors than a hundred of the finest rugs Elsbet had ever sold. Elsbet would never sell a rug in Marsett again.

A great ship with sails like crimson bat wings had made anchor in the harbor. Just one ship. The hay'tisan had thrown down their gangplank and come sprinting to the docks in eerie silence. Then, without a word, there was an explosion of color.

Elsbet only needed one look at the rainbows of fire to decide it was a fine time to leave Marsett. She gathered up her apprentice, her pair of merchant's guards, an armful of rugs, and dashed out to her wagon. The merchant's guards took only a moment to hook up the horses and hop aboard, then the wagon went off. By the time she reached the gates of the city, Elsbet was far from the only one trying to escape. Few of those others were mounted, and fewer still were armed with a wagon and a whip. Elsbet made liberal use of that whip to clear a path for the wagon. If she felt a few bumps under the wheels along the way, well she wasn't looking close enough to see what exactly those bumps were anyway.

Just beyond the gate, Elsbet could see more colorful conflagrations among those fleeing. She lashed the horses and roared, and somehow the wagon dashed outside the city. Elsbet saw people leaping out of her way. She saw a grey face turn to her with an unreadable gaze. For an instant, she felt heat at her back and saw her shadow in front of the wagon, cast in crimson light. Then there was a green light. In her peripheral vision, a violet light, and her apprentice crumpling in the seat beside her. Elsbet knew, but somehow did not allow herself to know, what had happened. She lashed the horses again, and the plains became a green blur.

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The hay'tisan were short and slender. The farmers who came out to fight for their homes were, by comparison, huge and sturdy. When the hay'tisan arrived by riverboat from the south and started killing, they looked like little grey children compared to those defenders. But the farmers were dying like ants underfoot, and colorful fires were consuming the village of Brakston. Jondrick collapsed his looking glass. He had seen enough.

Jondrick was the village blacksmith, and his workshop was far enough away from the village proper that the hay'tisan hadn't bothered him yet. Far enough away that, by the time he’d realized there was trouble, donned the shop’s only set of armor in his size, and returned to the front door, the village was already lost. Jondrick was sure the hay'tisan would burn down his shop before they got back on their boat and continued north.

Jondrick looked at his gauntleted hand. The whole suit of armor was made of heavy steel plates, and even his hands felt weighted and awkward. He was a blacksmith, not a soldier. He could make weapons, but barely use them. His usual craft was farm tools, anyway. He was a tall man, and broad with thick slabs of muscle from long days at the forge. Men looking for fights always steered clear of him, but the irony here was this meant Jondrick had never been in a serious fight. He had little doubt there were tavern brawlers far smaller than he who could toss him into the street if they ever tried. He had even less doubt these hay'tisan could kill him without sparing the effort to think about it.

Going down to fight in the village was a fool's errand. Waiting here in the workshop was as good as waiting for death. There was only one other option. He went back into the shop to find a sword. Since he knew he couldn’t use a sword no matter which one he grabbed, he settled on the biggest, wickedest-looking blade he could find. If he looked too tough to bother, he'd be safe on the road. Or at least, he hoped so. He slipped out the back door and headed east.

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Elsbet wasn't sure how long had passed since the sounds of chaos had faded behind her, but at some point she realized she needed to slow down before she ran the horses into the ground. She eased up on the reins and let the animals ease into a brisk trot. She let her eyes wander her surroundings. When her gaze fell on the seat beside her, she jerked the wagon to a halt. Elsbet heaved the charred corpse of her apprentice onto the ground and proceeded to check the back of the wagon. Two more blackened heaps lay among the rugs, one for each of her merchant's guards. A lot of the rugs were also singed and ruined. The wagon's canvas cover was half burnt away too.

Elsbet hopped out of the driver's seat and gave her surroundings a proper look. All around was nothing but wide open plains, and she could see for miles. There was nobody in sight. Elsbet gripped her skirts in a white-knuckled fist.

“Was I the only one who got out of that place alive?”

No one answered.

No, that couldn't be right. With so many people straining to escape the city, there must have been a few more who managed it. Elsbet was probably just the fastest of those who had fled. Yes, she was sure if she waited around long enough she'd see a line of refugees on foot following after her.

She couldn't see anything in the direction of Marsett. Not even smoke in the sky.

Elsbet haltered the horses and went around to the back of the wagon. First she pulled out one blackened heap, then a second. Then she tore the cover off the wagon and tossed it behind her. This was followed by great handfuls of rugs. There was one mostly intact rug of plain, grey wool which she set aside. The rest piled up in the grass behind her, making accidental burial mounds for her companions.

When the wagon was empty, she took the grey rug and cut a rough hole in its center with her belt knife. She took off her dress and put her head through the hole in the rug, letting the thick wool fall around her. She bent down and cut a strip of wool from the end of the rug in front of her, partly because it would have obstructed her steps, and partly to make a crude belt, which she tied about her waist. A look at the gilded sandals on her feet made Elsbet frown. The sandals came off and joined the pile of rugs.

With that, Elsbet un-haltered the horses and climbed back into the wagon. She made to put her belt knife back in its sheath but realized it was with her discarded dress. Instead of retrieving the sheath, she stuck the leather-wrapped wooden handle of the knife between her teeth, baring them in a rictus snarl. It wasn't the safest place to keep a knife during a wagon drive, but Elsbet would have wagered it completed the look she was going for. Now, instead of a wealthy merchant with a load of valuable cargo, she was a madwoman with an empty wagon. Any brigands or looters who saw her would know she wasn't worth the trouble.

One last wistful thought of the scattered rugs on the ground stayed her for a moment. It would have been nice to have those to sell in whatever town she ended up in next, but a lost fortune could always be found again with a little cunning. She whipped the horses and realized this road headed west toward the village of Brakston. She had a brother in Brakston.

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When Jondrick reached the bottom of the hill his workshop stood on, he looked behind him. Brakston was completely obscured from his vision by that hill. Looking up, he couldn't even see smoke from the burning village. Looking ahead of him, he saw nothing but unbroken, empty plains. He doubted the hay'tisan would pursue him too far from their boat even if they did climb the hill and see him in the distance. What troubled him was that he didn't see anyone else in the distance. Was he the only one who escaped? The thought made him sad. He knew most of the people in Brakston, by face if not always by name.

Jondrick felt his shoulders slump as he set out east across the plain, and he knew it was only partly from the armor's weight. The armor was awful heavy, but he hoped it would make for a good defense. He hoped it made for a good testament to his skill at the anvil too, so he could find work wherever he ended up. Where was he headed anyway?

Jondrick frowned for a moment before the answer emerged from the multicolored, burning haze in his mind. This road lead to Marsett. Marsett, and his older sister, Elsbet. Elsbet had left home and become a wealthy merchant, and Jondrick knew she could put him to work if anyone could. The thought raised his shoulders a bit. He liked the idea of making tools for his sister to sell.

An old memory came to Jondrick from a time when his sister was bigger than he was, and wolves had been howling in the plains. She'd made him feel safe then. She'd made him laugh and forget all about that howling in the night. She'd told him those wolves would never come near the village, and everything would be all right. Things always were all right when Elsbet was around.

Besides, if anywhere was safe from the hay'tisan, Marsett had to be. It was a city, with great stone walls and garrisons of trained soldiers to keep it safe from invasion. The hay'tisan were raiding villages because it was easy, but a great city like Marsett had to be safe.

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Elsbet felt stretched so taut she might just snap at any moment, but she didn't dare let the tension in her mind slacken, not for one moment. She was afraid she would unravel if she did. That sort of thing could happen if you let yourself relax after a stressful day. A merchant could have a bad day in the shop and be up, on her feet, and in high spirits the whole time. A merchant could close up the shop after such a day and all at once feel ready to collapse as the hours of exhausting work fell down on her mind in a rushing torrent. Elsbet didn't dare slacken. She kept her mind tense. She forced the images of the city in chaos, the bursts of fire, and the deaths of her followers to flash through her mind. Later, she could sleep for a week if she wanted to. Now, she had to ride.

When Elsbet had realized she was riding toward Brakston, she'd come up with a plan. She would stop at her brother's house, convince him to leave Brakston behind, take him on as her merchant's guard, and head north. No doubt the hay'tisan would never bother with a little fly-speck village like Brakston, but little fly-speck villages generally didn't have enough gold in them for merchants to grow wealthy off of. To the north, there were more great cities and more fortunes to gain. Everything would work out if she could just head north, and all she needed before heading that way was a guard who could look big and scary enough to make brigands and highwaymen think twice.

Jondrick would serve that purpose nicely.

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By the time Jondrick made his way to the road, he began to feel uneasy. No doubt he would run into more traffic as he got closer to Marsett, but for the time being there wasn't another soul in sight. He felt as though he were being watched from behind, and once or twice he turned around to look at the hill, now only a distant lump in the ground. No grey faces peered at him from the distance. There was still no smoke over Brakston either. Jondrick hated that. From over here, a traveler would never know there was a burning village on the other side of that hill.

There was nothing in sight. There was no sound apart from the wind on the plains and the clanking of the armor. The armor was heavy, and he felt a tension in his shoulders which he knew would break out into pain before long. A hero in a story could wear a suit like this and have a sword duel for three days and three nights straight. Jondrick knew he wasn't a hero from a story.

“I've turned my back on the homes of people I've known all my life,” he muttered into helmet's face-guard, “And now I'm running to hide under my sister's skirts.”

At that thought, Jondrick shook his head violently. He regretted it when the helmet shook around his head and knocked him in the jaw.

He just needed to get to Marsett. Everything would be all right if he could just get to Marsett.

When Jondrick had his helmet on straight again, he saw a shape approaching on the horizon. At this distance, he could only tell it was a wagon. It was nice to see someone at last.

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Elsbet had long since taken the belt knife out of her mouth. It was too much effort to hold it there the whole way, and it just felt silly besides. The belt knife was now sitting beside her on the driver's seat, and when she saw a figure in the distance, she glanced to make sure it was still there. In an empty wagon with two good horses, she drew closer and closer to the figure at a speed that made her teeth clench. The figure was far too big to be a hay'tisan, but that didn't make her feel much safer. The figure turned out to be a huge hulk of a man in thick plate armor, with the hilt of a massive sword sticking up behind his shoulder. He might have been an officer with some army, except he was alone and on foot out here on the road.

Elsbet didn't allow herself to feel fear. Instead, she channeled her unease into fury. The belt knife wouldn't do much good against that armor, but she picked it up and stuck it back between her teeth anyway. This strange man was clearly a brigand of some sort, maybe intent on blocking the road to extort a toll from Marsett's refugees. Elsbet's fury turned white hot. She let out a wordless roar around the knife hilt and lashed the horses into a mad dash. This brigand would either get out of her way or be run down. She didn't care which.

In a matter of seconds, it was over. The horses galloped, the wagon shook, Elsbet screamed til her throat itched, and somewhere in the chaos she saw the armored man leap out of the way and land in a heavy, graceless heap on the side of the road. Very satisfying. She eased up on the reins and let the horses slow to a nice trot. Now all she had to do was reach Brakston and gather up Jondrick. After that, she had a fortune to regain.

Was the man shouting something at her? Elsbet didn't care.

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Somehow, Jondrick managed to pull himself to his feet. That crazy wagon driver had tried to run him down! In spite of that, he'd realized the wagon was heading right for the burning village, and he’d shouted about it at the wagon as it sped away from him. He didn't think the driver had heard him, though.

Whoever was on the wagon, he hoped the hay'tisan were gone from Brakston by the time it reached there. No matter how crazy the driver was, nobody deserved to come face to face with that sort of certain death. There was nothing he could do about it now, though. The wagon would reach Brakston long before he could ever catch up to it. There was nothing for it but to take a deep breath and keep moving forward, toward Marsett, his sister, and safety.