Ruin and Rebirth by Michael Whitehead

Author:Michael Whitehead
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Published: 2018-05-29T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Vitus killed two Risen, and Gallus a third as the travellers hunted for a place to camp for the night. Dusk was approaching and a chill was trying to close in around them.

The Alps were cold and hard. In the lowlands, autumn was only just trying to fight off the fist attack of winter. Up in the mountains the beginning of winter was already throwing spears of ice into the heart of anyone who dared her paths and ravines.

The most travelled routes were still open in all but the worst parts, Vitus and his friends were forced to climb over and in one case under rock falls and paths blocked by deep snow. The furs and layers of extra clothes Juliana and the people of the town had given them were welcome, but still they battled bitter cold while they travelled. It would not be many more weeks before the mountains became almost impassable by all but the most experienced travellers.

The southernmost parts of Germania brought with them a relief from the snow of the mountains but the cold still bit at their exposed flesh as they walked. They were five days off the mountains and night was closing in when Vitus asked Lucia a question she should really have been expecting.

They had all been sat around a low fire, hidden from the road by a natural bowl in the earth and surrounded by tall rocks. The bodies of the Risen were laying back in the high grass, at rest at last.

“Do you want to go back to you father's estate to see what has become of it?” Vitus had asked so casually that Lucia hadn’t understood the magnitude of the question. The question took her by surprise and brought back to her the life she had left behind, lost in the chaos of everything that had followed. Suddenly the weight of everything that she no longer had in her life came falling in on her, like the collapsing walls of a house that she had thought was safe.

“I...I don’t know, should I?” she asked, all at once unsure of herself. In the time she had spent away from the estate, she had grown from a girl into a young woman. Age had not done that to her, experience had. She had fallen in love, fought and killed, lost loved ones and learned that life could be so much harder than you can ever be ready for.

“It really is your choice, Lucia,” Vitus had said. “We have a couple of days of food left in our packs and water for a day or two more, but we will need to find supplies soon. The reason I ask is because we are a day’s walk from the edge of your father’s estate. I thought you might want to see what has happened to it.”

Vitus kept calling it her father’s estate, but in truth it was hers now. Her father was lost, she knew that beyond doubt. Once, in a life that felt so long ago that she could hardly remember it, she might have held out some hope for him.

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