The Things We Bury
The Things We Bury
Kaleb Schad
THE
THINGS
WE
BURY
written and illustrated by
KALEB SCHAD
Copyright © 2019 by Kaleb Schad. All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events or locales is purely coincidental. Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.
I greatly appreciate you taking the time to read my work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book, or telling your friends about it, to help me spread the word.
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Contents
TO CORWIN AND GIDEON
Untitled
Map of Fisher Pass
THE LOVED UNWORTHY
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
OF BONES AND LIES
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
BITTER REMNANTS
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
THE BONE WALL
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
THANK YOU AND A SMALL REQUEST
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Also By Kaleb Schad
About the Author
TO CORWIN AND GIDEON
All your blessings will always be right in front of you. You just have to see them.
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The Things We Bury FREE
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THE LOVED UNWORTHY
BOOK ONE
Prologue
The day Felner Merryheller died was the first good day he’d had in four years. He stood half a head taller than his corn stalks, the tassels tickling his nose, and he pressed his palms to the small of his back and arched. Bless Airim, but that was a beautiful sunset. A breeze brushed across his sweaty forehead and he could hear his son, Randlin, weaving through the corn five rows yonder.
Bless Airim for Randlin as well. It had been a terrifying four years, but it seemed the Merryheller household had weathered the worst of it. Yes, he’d lost his dear wife Phini to the Rot, but compared to most, that was a blessing. Some had lost everything. Some had gone mad and taken themselves and their families before the Rot could. He couldn’t say he blamed them and he was certain Airim wouldn’t—the way that disease swept out from the bone wall like a fire, taking half of everyone it touched. He still had nightmares of watching Phini’s tongue slough off. The choking sounds she had made. Spitting it onto the floor like that. Just plopped there, this blackened lump of tissue and a pool of spit. That was the first part of his wife to fall away, when they both knew the next time they would see each other was in Airim’s arms. It was as if the Wretched had decided if they couldn’t push the wall forward anymore they’d find another way to torment the good people of Humay.
But those were dark thoughts for another time. There hadn’t been a new case of the Rot in a year. Today, now, this was a blessed day indeed. The corn was higher than it had been in any of the last six seasons, his son and daughter were home and healthy. His daughter even had a suitor, Little Saren, sniffing around. Felner pretended to scowl and frighten the lad, but he couldn’t hide his excitement at a marriage and maybe even a grandkid in the near future.
Felner turned to look at his house. Esther had a fire going, the smoke hazing from the chimney, catching the light, drifting up along the face of Millner Mountain. Felner’s father had built that house when Baron Blackhand’s family settled the area. They were on the far reaches of Fisher Pass and the baron’s territory, well over a week’s ride out, just the way they liked it. It wasn’t that Felner didn’t like seeing people, it was just that he liked not seeing them more. Sure, the bone wall was closer than most people liked, but it hadn’t come any closer in his or his father’s or even his grandfather’s time. He couldn’t see any reason it would get uppity and start strolling towards them now.
Storm clouds moved up and over Millner’s ridge, blotting out the setting sun. They rolled towards him. Fast moving. That was odd. And dark. Well, a little rain wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen tonight.
The clouds crawled overhead, destroying what evening light they’d had. A purple veil settled across everything.
“Pa?” Randlin called out.
The lad was looking at something up Millner’s face, at something white moving along the mountain’s ridge. An avalanche? There weren’t much snow left up there for an avalanche.
And avalanches don’t grow like that.
The white shape spread both wider and taller, reaching across the entire horizon, rising into the sky. It dwarfed the few trees growing above the timberline. Higher and higher. A whispering hiss reached Felner, grew to a dull moan, staccato cracks in the mix, a clacking sound like stones clapping against each other.
It’s impossible…
Felner had never seen the bone wall—they’d lived far enough away from civilization that when the recruiters came around every couple of years to gather the young conscripts, they’d always missed the Merryheller household—but he knew this was it.
And it’s moving. Somehow it’s moving.
He could do nothing but stand there and watch as it rolled down Millner’s face. He’d been to the port city of Nove once as a boy. A storm had come in from the Salt Boil Sea and he’d been fascinated as waves twice the size of a house crashed against the shore. This bone wall made those waves look like toy blocks. It surged towards him, tiny black specks inside the wave, millions of Mites throwing the bones forward.
If the bone wall is moving…where are the Fletchers? The
Wallwraiths?
“Airim save us,” Randlin screeched.
His son was looking at something behind him. The corn stalks swayed.
And then Randlin screamed, high pitched, almost childlike, a primal sound. Something black and wet and bristled leaped, its arc cresting the corn stalks. It sucked Randlin down. More screams.
Felner drew a breath to call his son’s name.
He turned and saw a black, four-legged creature loping towards him, its mouth wide, a damp, forked tongue dangling happily. Its face was built from three dead creatures’ skulls stitched together with what looked like wire sutures. It had no eyes, only two slots for nostrils and it made a wet, almost joyful, clicking sound.
A Fletcher.
Phini, I’m coming.
He never let out the scream.
1
Daveon drummed his fingers against his thigh as he waited for his son to finish his bedtime chant.
“I don’t want any Wraiths or Fletchers to come. I want to stay in my home, always want to stay in my home. I want to wake up,” Nikolai whispered. His little brother, Elnis, snored next to him.
Daveon agreed with everyone who said Nikolai looked like him, the dirty blond hair and narrow grey eyes, but he’d be damned if he knew where this insistence for ritual came from. It was the same thing every night. For six years, since Nikolai was two, he’d recited this little routine. He guessed it was his son’s form of a prayer, but at that moment, Daveon could feel his patience going the way of a mouse in a cat’s jaws. The way it seemed to go more and more lately.
He raced through his own part: “No Fletchers or Wraiths are coming, you’ll stay in your home, always stay in your home and you’ll wake up. Now, go to sleep.” These last words were barely out before he turned to leave.
“Pa?”
Daveon stopped. He let out a deep breath, made an effort to smooth over his scowl before turning back. It wasn’t Nikolai’s fault he was going to be late to the Sunflower Stop. None of this was Nikolai’s fault. Only one of us gets to carry that torch.
“Yeah?”
“Will they ever come?”
“Who?”
“The monsters.”
“What? No.”
“I had a dream. A dead dog with a hurt belly was growling at me and Elnis was trying to get onto Red, but he was too small and a girl was pulling at him, but she couldn’t and there was a big white thing. I think it was the wall. I think it…” He stopped, his chin shivering.
Ice washed through Daveon’s guts as he watched his child crumple under fear. He knelt next to the straw mattress, careful not to wake Elnis, and pulled Nikolai into a hug.
“Shh,” he hushed, holding the child’s head against him. He lifted Nikolai’s chin. “The wall isn’t going anywhere. It hasn’t moved since before your grandpapa’s pa was a little boy. It was just a dream.”
“Promise?”
“Promise. You let your ma and pa worry about those things. We’ll take care of you.”
Because I’ve done a bang-up fucking job so far.
A swollen summer sun was halfway down by the time Daveon made it out to the stable. Dammit. If he didn’t hurry, he’d have to ride to the Sunflower Stop and wouldn’t be able to walk. That meant no sword work. Again. If Malic was going to force him to work the Stop as part of his repayment, Daveon tried to at least claw out something for himself from it. He’d come to cling to that walk into town every night these last eight months as his only chance to practice his blade work. Clung to it as a drowning man clings to air…with as much success.
Five months old and the stable still smelled new, the warm sweat of pine sap stirring with horse dung and hay. It should have been a pleasant smell, but to Daveon it reeked of debt and failure.
Alysha stood at a stall near the front, a threshing fork leaning against the wall. She watched Tilly, a blue roan, pace around the stall, turning front and back, her tail swishing. Black mucus dripped from her nostrils and her eyes were rimmed with crusted yellow. Daveon’s stomach twisted. She wasn’t going to make it.
“It’s okay, girl. Shhh. Settle yourself. C’mon,” Alysha cooed. She’d tied back her long brown hair, but several strands had broken free and hid her face. Even now, all these years later, Daveon admired her beauty. Maybe the most beautiful woman in all of Fisher Pass. And she’d picked him. Kind of. Their mothers had picked him, but Alysha had been happy enough to go along.
After all, it’s easy to love a lie. What happens if she ever discovers the truth?
“That venison is still in the kettle for you,” Daveon said.
“That was supposed to be for you. You haven’t eaten all day.”
“I’d feel better if you had it. I’m not sure when we’ll see meat again. I can maybe sneak something tonight at the Stop.”
Tilly coughed and a black glop spattered in the straw.
“We lose any more after her and we won’t meet the King’s contract,” Daveon said. “We’ll have to sell Syla. At least the Skets have those two stallions. They won’t catch it.”
“The Skets can keep those two for a little while yet. In the meantime, Tilly’ll be okay,” Alysha said. “Won’t you, girl?”
“My old man. If he could see me now,” he said. Then, in a mocking tone sounding nothing like his father, “No Therentell would ever…”
“Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe he’d a lost them all to the Rot. Maybe he’d a quit after the fire.”
“You ever meet my old man? Quit wasn’t a word he knew. He always said be sure you’re up working on both sides of the sun because a man reaps what he sows. Look what I’m sowing now.”
“Daveon, you’re up on both sides of the sun and both sides of the moon, for Airim’s sake. You didn’t bring the Rot on us. That’s the Wretched’s doing.” She waved a hand at Tilly and said, “This…it’s in Airim’s hands.”
He scoffed. He wished even a dull luster of his wife’s eternal brightness would rub off on him. Ten years of marriage and he still felt like any day now she’d finally see through him, see her mistake in accepting their parents’ proposal.
“And Market is just a couple days away,” Alysha said. “We can make it until then. Lily Benhoven already laid claim to five pairs of gloves.”
He ground his palms into his eyes. Rubbed his face. “Gods. The Therentells selling gloves.”
Alysha reached for Daveon, but he stepped away. He didn’t want to be touched. He didn’t want her to pretend everything was going to be okay, that she didn’t blame him for all of this. How could she not? Every day with the kids and the horses. Every night with the needle and hides. He saw the way she massaged her knuckles in secret, trying not to let him see her pain, the way the tallow candles that used to last a week, now burned down in two nights’ time. Airim’s breath, he hadn’t even been strong enough to come up with the idea. It was a smart use of the dead horses’ hides, something, anything that they could do to feed their kids. And she’d had to be the one to come up with it. All because he couldn’t keep a fucking horse alive for the life of him.
“It’ll be okay,” Alysha said. “The wall and Wretched couldn’t keep Daveon Therentell down, a little Rot in our horses isn’t going to. You’ve always found a way. We’ve always found a way. We’ll find one again.”
Daveon could only shake his head. When would he be able to shrug out from under that particular pile of lies? When had they gotten so heavy?
“I don’t know what’s worse,” he said. “That you can’t see it all crumbling around us or that you see it and still think that.”
“You’re right. I should hang my head and weep and mope and cry to the gods about how unfair life is. I hear they like that. They answer prayers like that.”
“Do you smell that?”
“What?”
“That.” He nodded at Tilly, at the fetid odor oozing from her every opening.
“She has the sick.”
“That is the smell of failure, Alysha. That is the smell of us starving to
death in four months. Of you and our two boys huddled in the house in the fucking cold with nothing to eat and you all looking at me wondering how I could have let this happen.”
Alysha’s eyes welled as she glared at him and he could see a thousand replies whipping through her mind. He deserved every one of them, but she held them back, sparing him. Her mercy hurt more than any rejoinder she might have thrown at him.
“I’m sorry,” Daveon whispered.
“That’s not going to happen,” she finally said. “It’ll be okay.”
He closed his eyes. “What if it’s not, Alysha? Gods, I can’t…you deserved…my whole life wasted…and now you guys…”