Ander - Part 6: Subchapter 85
85
The world had long since stopped making sense in Ander's eyes. It was no longer a world of matter, of substance, of air and earth and water, or even of flesh and spirit, but of voices and choices, all mixing together, all coalescing into a vortex so tightly twisted it was impossible to tell where one voice began and another ended, each one telling him, screaming at him, to do something different, each one a choice, each one a looping line leading to an unknowable outcome. If only all of them could have been one way or the other, there wouldn't have been a problem. If only all of them could have been monsters, or if all of them could have been Wolves, then everything would have been right. But it wasn't. They were all mixed together, just like the feelings of his heart - some kind, some wicked, some fearful, some angry, some screaming and some crying.
He didn't know what to do.
"Ander, please... Don't blow on that horn!" Hezzi, his little brother, pleaded for mercy.
"Ander, please, don't kill my mother!" Renna. She risked her life to save him, and now she was putting it all on the line again, risking her life just for the chance to save her mother, a she-wolf who had beaten her and hated her her whole life.
Ander didn't want to blow on this horn around his neck. He didn't want to kill again!
There were so many Wolves almost directly beneath him, at least forty, holding hands, standing tall against the insanity of their people. But there were so many more on the other side, including the she-wolf who had raised him since birth, the same she-wolf Hezzi was, this very moment, begging to be spared. Shekka. The Empty One.
If he blew this horn, everyone down there would die. All the Wolves seeking forgiveness and redemption, who had thrown down their weapons, who had exposed their throats to the teeth of their brethren just for the chance to be heard, would die. All the children, looking to the adults for guidance, their hearts filled with doubt and regret, would die. His mother, his brother, he would kill them all. He would murder them all.
He would murder his own heart.
But if he didn't blow on this horn, if he didn't end it all right now, then Hezzi and Renna would be torn to pieces by the very Wolves whose lives they were begging to be spared, along with all the Foxes lining this wall and their families huddled together in the valley, waiting for their husbands and fathers and brothers to come home.
No matter what he did, no matter what path he chose, he would be a murderer.
Ander gripped the horn, letting his fingers neatly fall between the grooves, and searched desperately for a third option, some choice other than the two laid out before him, some hidden thread deep inside the swirling vortex the world had become, but there was none that he could see, none...
He raised his head to the pitch-black sky; starless, moonless, bordered by the jaws of the Cora to the north and south. Foul breath flew from deep inside its throat and struck his upturned face, frigid winds and flakes of snow, burning cold, icy blades that stung his eyes, forcing his tears and freezing them dead on his cheeks.
It was up there, waiting for him, waiting for him to take this cursed horn to his lips...
Waiting for him to save everyone.
Waiting for him to kill everyone.
Waiting for him to protect everyone.
Waiting for him to doom everyone.
Waiting for him to end it all.
He didn't know what to do...
*
Devin didn't know what it was like to be dead, but he was fairly sure the current state of affairs couldn't be too far removed from the actual experience. He was cold. He was tired. It was so dark he could barely see his own hand in front of his face. He wanted nothing more than to go home and curl up in his favourite armchair by the fire, but instead he was up here, balanced precariously at the top of the most dinky little tree that ever had the bad sense to grow so far up a mountain, holding an old, frayed piece of rope between his shaking hands, trying to listen for the sound of a single ram's horn above all this godsdamned wind blowing in his face.
But maybe focussing on how miserably uncomfortable it was up here was just another way for him to not focus on how bowel-emptyingly terrified he was. Everything around him was pitch black, but he could see the faintest orange glow shining against the opposite side of the pass, twinkling dimly inside jagged rows of icicles, like teeth that had suddenly grown demonic eyeballs. If he stared at it for too long, he could almost convince himself that he was actually looking at a chasm leading straight to hell. As if to enhance this nightmarish illusion, he could sometimes hear voices floating up from the deeps when the wind blew just right; deep, tortured voices intermingled with snarls and animalistic growling and even the occasional roar, like a bunch of devils cavorting in the dark.
Devin shook his head and berated himself for having such crazy thoughts. He had a job to focus on, and that job was... far more gristly than anything he could imagine, actually.
He tried to move into a more comfortable position and nearly screamed out loud when the whole bough shifted beneath his bum, creaking alarmingly.
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall...
He held onto the trunk for dear life, squeezing with arms and legs both, until the swaying finally stopped and he was able to breathe again.
And down will come Devvie...
"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Devin whispered to himself, banging his head against the rough bark. He didn't sign up for this to lose his mind. He signed up for this to, well...
He looked at the rope in his hands. It was a dirty old thing, and it smelled faintly of wheat. Rather innocuous, really, if it weren't for the fact that the other end was tied to the biggest death-trap anyone had ever conceived of in the history of the world, made all the more terrifying for its sheer simplicity. Hell, it was so moronically simple it could be set off by a single shivering Fox yanking on a rope.
Cradle and all...
Back when he was a kid, Devin used to play alone a lot, mostly because the other kids didn't like him very much, but also partly because he didn't like _them_very much. He didn't mind, though. He was really good at keeping himself entertained, and one of his favourite toys was his collection of marbles. Big ones, small ones, coloured ones and clear ones. There were all kinds of marble games you could play by yourself, and one of those was table racing.
They used to have this really big kitchen table, oak, covered in knots that looked a bit like surprised eyes (his grandparents still used that table, as a matter of fact). It wasn't one solid piece, but a bunch of planks hammered together, which meant that there were seams running along its length. Little Devin didn't see those lines as anything as mundane as 'seams' though. No, through the eyes of a child, those little dips were race tracks.
He used to lean a ruler against the salt and pepper shakers (that was the starting line) and then take two or three of his favourite marbles and give each of them a track. Then, all he had to do was lift the ruler and see which one made it to the end of the table first. Hours of fun, that was, mixing and matching, seeing which marbles were the fastest, big ones or small ones, heavy ones or light ones, experimenting to see if certain tracks were more advantageous than others (the far left track always produced more winners for some reason).
It was still hard to imagine that a childhood game could be applied to the extermination of an entire race of people.
The other end of this rope was tied to a system of gears that was, in turn, attached to a simple, wooden gate. If he yanked on this piece of rope hard enough, he would disengage the tooth that kept the gears locked in place, and the whole thing would simply fall flat like a drawbridge, releasing tons and tons of rocks, logs, and a week's worth of accumulated snow onto the heads of their enemies, along with anything else it picked up along the way.
What Ander had created was essentially a gigantic wooden trough, filled to the brim, not with food scraps, but death.
Pure, undiluted death.
Don't think about that, Devin. It's not really you killing all those Wolves. You're just the one pulling the rope. Ander's the one who's going to give the signal.
So why hasn't he?
A rather worrying bubble of nausea formed in the pit of his stomach and just sort of floated there, steadily getting worse with time. He knew they were down there, so where was the signal?
Oh crap did I miss it!? Was the wind too loud!? Oh dear gods up in heaven did I miss it!?
Devin very nearly pulled the rope (he actually went through all the slack and felt it pull tight for a fraction of a second), but then forced himself to calm down and think rationally. It was one of the few things he was really good at, something he actually took a miniscule amount of pride in.
Firstly, he couldn't have missed the signal. They tested it with that very horn, and he was positive he would have heard that ugly, woeful noise even above this frightfully unpleasant squall.
Secondly, he was pretty sure that, if there really was a fight going on down there, he would have heard more than just a random assortment of growls and snarls. Why, if there were as many souls down there as he thought there were, then the whole pass would have erupted with noise long before -
The noise was building. He tried to tell himself it was just the wind blowing through the pass again, but there was no mistaking the voices in that steady drone, building like thunder. Even that scary orange light was getting brighter, as though more and more torches were being lit, or -
Or maybe it really is hell down there, opening its mouth wide...
"Dammit, Devin! Get a hold of yourself!" he said and gave his head yet another smack (considerably harder than the first). That seemed to settle his overactive imagination (for now, at least), but still, he couldn't help but worry. The noise coming from that growing pool of orange light wasn't like anything he had ever heard before. It wasn't simply a thousand voices shouting over each other, but more like a single voice comprised of a thousand, if that made any sense. There was a unity to it, a kind of rhythm, waxing and waning, pulsing and throbbing like a monstrous heartbeat, going faster and faster. What the hell was going on down there?
Devin squeezed the rope between his hands, shaking like a leaf.
And where was the damn signal!?
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