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Bailey Pilgrim’s buried six feet deep and that’s where he’s likely to stay.
Folks say it’s best to stay on the beaten path in Velen. There’s wolves and witches in the swamp, bandits and even stranger creatures up in the woods beyond. Trouble is, the armies had heard the same thing everyone else has, and that’s why it weren’t always so easy to keep to the roads. One day, in fact, me and the boys were making our way down a side road and got wind of a patrol just in time to duck into the trees. We were feeling pretty good about our narrow escape up until one of my guys pokes his head a little out of hiding to see how many they are and ducks back down again real quick. A crossbow bolt hit the dirt right next to my hand and buried itself in deep.
“Damn. Seems they got good lookouts,” the man says. Vernon Roche, behind him, frowns irritably.
Then we heard footsteps scrambling up the slope toward us and slip off into the woods all together. At least, it was together when we got going, but as we kept moving and kept hearing heavy footsteps and armor rattling behind and all around, I reckon we lost sight of each other in the trees. It was a cloudy early fall sort of day, so the woods were dim since the leaves hadn’t come down yet. That particular part was crowded with underbrush and tangled vines, too, so no one person could easily take the same path through it. Being a little smaller than most of the others, I had a somewhat easier time. The footsteps kept on following me and I kept moving accordingly, through thornbushes and then along a creek that I followed so I wouldn’t get too lost. After a while, I realized I couldn’t hear nobody else anymore, just myself. I also, just casually, noticed that it was starting to rain.
I sat down on a rotting log by the water and took a breather.
Now, they say when you’re lost in the woods to stay where you’re at. It makes it easier to find you, if anyone’s looking. I knew the saying, of course, but I thought it over and decided to ignore its advice. The trouble wasn’t that nobody would come looking. It was that I didn’t know how far away I was from the road, nor did I have any clue where any of my associates had gotten to. Further, we were a few days out from base, and we weren’t due back for a week. I didn’t plan on waiting around for days until someone decided I was missing.
“Son of a bitch,” I said, to make myself feel better. I stood up, dusted myself off, and started slogging back upstream. I figured likely as not someone else might have had the same idea I did, and I’d find them somewhere along its course. I could only hope that if anyone had it was friends, not foes.
Seemed as though I’d gone a lot farther than I thought I had, though, because it started raining harder and getting later in the day but I never found anyone else or even any sign like I’d been through at all. A long, hard walk later the stream up and disappeared into a little cave in the hillside. Well, I sure wasn’t planning to see who lived inside, so I struggled along up that hill, slipping and sliding in wet leaves and mud, managed to make the top with only a few new scrapes and bruises, and found a path.
The path, I thought at first, all relieved, but then I realized it couldn’t have been. I stood there for a minute, looking back and forth on it. It was too narrow, and didn’t look like anyone but deer and squirrels had used it much. It wound away into the woods one way, and further uphill the other way, framed on either side by the trees. An owl hooted off in the rain somewhere. I glanced upward, reckoned it was getting toward evening, caught a raindrop right in my eye, and after I dealt with that turned right and kept going uphill. Paths led somewhere, most of the time. I just had to hope this one led to a place that was close by.
My day hadn’t going too well. Nighttime didn’t improve my situation. I didn’t get to any place before dark, or before the rain got going in earnest. I was plodding along, wishing to any god I could think of that I could find a dry spot to lay out my bedroll and that I didn’t walk right into any Nilf patrols or monsters gone for a nice evening walk. I only stopped because I suddenly got hit with a stink of burning. There wasn’t much to see except a vague hint of the black woods and the slightly less dark sky, but I sniffed the air and figured, in that weather, it was probably smoke from a cooking fire or campfire blowing low across the forest. Now, it could have been a passing trader who wouldn’t mind sharing, but it could have more likely been a crew of bandits or deserters hiding out far off the beaten path. I took a minute to think about whether I wanted to take the risk.
Then something in the woods behind me made a low hoom hoom noise.
“That ain’t an owl,” I say out loud to myself, but quiet, and suddenly decide that bandits aren’t such a problem, anyway. I follow the smell up the slope, fortunately still up the path, moving a sight faster than I was before even though there were tree roots and holes to consider. There was light around the bend, just at the crown of the hill; a campfire, tucked up near to the porch of a burnt-down old house. I slowed up before I walked up to it, because I could see someone sitting next to it, huddled in shadow. Whoever it was spotted me and stood up with a sword in hand so I approached real slow, made sure my hands were visible, and -
“Ves,” they say to me.
It’s the Commander, I think, with another relieved breath out. If anyone’s going to clear this mess up, it’s him.
“That’s right,” I replied, stepping up next to the blaze. It didn’t do much for warmth, as it was guttering badly in the downpour, but it was better than being in the dark. “Don’t suppose you know where we’re at?”
He sat back down, shook his graying head, said, “I found this cabin; didn’t like the looks of it at first, as I don’t think it burned down very long ago, but it seems to be abandoned.”
“Huh,” I said, crouched down in the mud, and asked, “Seen anyone else around?”
I meant any of our people. He shook his head again.
“Don’t quite understand how this happened,” I said. “Not the first time we’ve had to make a quick break for it, and we never managed to get this lost. It’s just -”
The Commander glanced up, suddenly, stared away into the woods like an alarmed dog. I shut up and stood up, reaching for my sword. Something or someone was on their way toward us. Whoever it was limped on the left leg and stood leaning crookedly sideways, like a windblown sapling. They was dressed all in a black coat and hood, but they didn’t raise any weapons.
“Good evenin’,” the stranger said to us, polite enough. Roche glanced my way and nodded.
“Same to you,” I replied, squinting for a sight of a face or any sign of the wrong color flag under the black coat.
“Don’t suppose the pair of you might have room at that fire for another,” he says to me. I hesitate; on the one hand, wasn’t polite to turn a request from another traveler away, but on the other -
“We might,” I said. “But times ain’t what they used to be, as you know, and a man can’t trust just anyone on the road these days.”
At that, the man pulls his hood down. He had a square kind of face and dark hair that hung down in wet ropes - he balding at the top; he was older than Roche, I would have guessed - but his accent sounded Temerian and he didn’t look wrong-like, just a little haggard around the eyes, like most people.
“I ain’t armed, as you can see,” the stranger says, opening his coat and showing us. He wasn’t, either, or at least not so I could tell; he didn’t even have armor. I glanced at Roche. He nodded again.
“You’re welcome to sit by,” I said. The man came up the hill, sat himself down across from us, stooped out a little to rub his hands together close to the sputtering blaze. He had a piece of knotted rope tied around each of his wrists, like bracelets. I stayed close to Roche, who was keeping a quiet eye on our visitor. Something about the way his hair hung around and shadowed his face in the firelight, or maybe the fraying ropes he was wearing around, made me feel a little unsure about him where I hadn’t when he was further away.
“Thank you kindly. The name’s Bailey,” the stranger said to us. “Bailey Pilgrim. Yours?”
I looked toward Roche. He shook his head.
“You’re better off not knowing, trust me,” I said.
“Oh, I do,” the man says to me. “I surely do.”
That was all we said to each other. Or all I said to him, anyway. Roche never spoke a single word.
We all sat awake. I watched our visitor. So did Roche. Bailey Pilgrim just sat, hunched over with his hands clasped together, so close to the fire it was a wonder he didn’t get burned. Eventually I got up to look for firewood out of the edges of the trees, keeping the light well in sight. The night wind gusted in the leaves; a few stars and a fingernail of moon showed through the shreds in the cloud overhead. The rain had been coming and going in stops and it finally stopped for good while I was picking up sticks. After I came back with an armful of mostly dry branches and carefully set a few into the fire, Bailey Pilgrim sat upright, stretched himself with a sound of cracking joints, and announced, “I reckon it’s time I was off.”
“Oh,” I said, slightly dumbfounded; it wasn’t even close to daylight and we hadn’t made any sign we didn’t want him around anymore. “Are you sure?”
“Afraid so, lass. I appreciate your hospitality nonetheless. Goodbye now.”
With that the man stood, pulled his coat around himself, yanked his hood up, and limped off down the slope back into the dark woods. Me and Roche watched him leave in silence. When he didn’t come back after a few minutes, the Commander shrugged a little and apparently dismissed the whole event.
“Get some sleep,” he said. “I’ll keep watch.”
I woke up to a cool, grayish early morning. There was no more rain, and I thought the pale blue overhead would be clean sky, once daylight finally got going. A heavy fog surrounded the hill, hanging over the trees. I went around the side of that burned-down shack, on some personal business, kept going in a loop back around when I finished, and stopped dead as I rounded the back.
“Vernon,” I said. “You’d better come look.”
He came around, rubbing his left eye blearily. The weary, drawn-out look on his face shifted to a dark frown. What he was looking at - what I’d found - was a big old twisting oak tree behind the ruined building, with a moldering skeleton hanging from the neck off a low branch. The corpse had been there a little while, I figured; animals had picked most of the edible parts, but it hadn’t been there so long as to fall down in its own, and there were still shreds of clothes hanging off it and fraying ropes holding its wrists together in the front. It swung back and forth a little in the breeze.
“Hmm,” he said, squinting at it. I translated this as mild surprise and nodded agreement.
“Yep.”
“Well, cut it down,” he said, glancing around at the grayed-out woods downhill from us like he expected to see who done it hanging around still. “I’ll start digging, I suppose.”
Ever tried to dig a grave with nothing but a trench shovel and a hunting knife? Probably not, I’m guessing. Well, it ain’t easy, even if you’re used to it. Took over half the morning to get it done, heave that half-rotten skeleton into the resulting hole, and then shove all the dirt and rocks back down over it. We didn’t bother marking the place when we were done, just sat for a while, looking at the square of dirt we’d cut out.
The fog had since burned off. I wiped filth off my hands on my jacket, looked out over the trees, and spotted a shadowy object in the far horizon.
“Say, ain’t that Crow’s Perch?”
Roche looked up and away at it and then nodded slowly, frowning again.
“Damn. How’d we get this far out of the way?”
“Let’s not worry about it,” he said. “In fact, we can get by on not talking about anything that happened in the last, oh, twenty hours.”
He met my eyes when I looked toward him. He looked tired. I decided not to argue.
“Yeah,” I said. “You might be right, there.”
Roche nodded slowly as we came to that understanding, and stood up.
“Let’s move out.”
Like I said, Bailey Pilgrim’s long since been in the grave. Still, if you happen to see him some rainy night, it don’t hurt to let him sit by the fire a while. He’s a harmless fellow, and he’ll thank you for it.