Chapter 11 #2
Alsen shook his head. Over a hundred yards wide, fast flowing, with a waterfall not even a mile behind them, he was not risking that. “Without losing our things? If the current tears your sleeping bag off your backpack, you’re never finding it again.”
“Right. We walk.” She sped up a bit.
With a smirk, Alsen caught up.
They followed the river bank. The path here was well-maintained, clearly a common route for travelers heading to Vellhorn. They passed a few other people, farmers mostly, who nodded politely but didn’t stop to chat.
Luna pointed across the river. "That’s not looking good over there."
Alsen looked. A crowd had formed, perhaps thirty people, arranged in a rough semicircle. Guards stood at the edges, their uniforms marking them as official rather than military. In the center, a man in formal robes stood beside a stone platform.
And in front of the platform, a family. A young couple, the woman clutched a bundle to her chest, and both of them were crying. Beside them stood an old woman in a gray shawl, hair pinned up neat, back straight.
She was the only one not crying.
"What is that about?" Alsen asked. That indeed didn't look good at all.
Luna's expression had hardened. "Let's keep walking."
"Luna—"
"Keep walking."
He didn't. He couldn't stop watching as the scene unfolded across the water.
The robed official raised his hands, and the crowd fell silent. His voice carried across the river, amplified by some means, magical or acoustic.
"Citizens of Millrest. We gather today in accordance with Edict Seven of the Sustainability Mandate."
The young woman let out a sob that cut through the official's words.
"Nine days ago, a child was born to this family, and we rejoice, for children are the future of Millrest." The official's tone stayed flat, practiced, a man reading a recipe.
"But the land provides for those who live upon it, and the land's bounty is not infinite.
To preserve our prosperity, to secure the future of our children, we must preserve a sustainable order.
Sustainability is the key to our shared future, to the protection of our land and its nature.
For with an unsustainable growth, our fields would dry, animals would all be hunted down, and we would all die in a famine. "
Alsen's blood ran cold. He was starting to understand. The bundle in the woman's arms. The old woman standing away from the family, already apart. The river. The waterfall downstream.
A life had been added to the books. A life was owed.
"For the sustainable future to be achieved, we must adhere to our rules of sustainability. A life has been given to Millrest. And so, as regrettable as it might seem, that which exceeds what is sustainable must be returned to mother nature."
"Alsen." Luna's voice was tight. "We really should go."
He didn't move. His hands had begun to shake.
At the water's edge waited a boat. A small flat-bottomed skiff, no oars, no rudder, a single bench with a folded blanket on it.
Well-built. Well-maintained. It had the worn, cared-for look of a thing the town used regularly, and that detail lodged itself somewhere under Alsen's ribs and stayed there.
The old woman turned to her family. She embraced the young father first, brief and firm. Then she reached for the bundle, and the mother, her daughter, it had to be her daughter, and handed it over with shaking arms.
The old woman held her grandchild. Looked at the tiny face for a long moment. Said something too quiet to carry across the water.
Then she handed the baby back, and her daughter broke.
The scream tore across the river, raw, wordless at first and then finding its shape and she grabbed her mother's hands and would not let go.
The guards didn't move. They didn't have to.
It was the old woman who pried the fingers loose, one by one, gently, patting her daughter's cheek like she was soothing a child who'd scraped a knee.
The young father pulled his wife back and held her while she screamed into his chest, the bundle pressed between them.
The old woman walked to the boat.
An official reached out a hand to help her in.
She waved it off and stepped over the gunwale herself, steadying on the bench, and sat down facing downstream.
She arranged her skirt. Unfolded the blanket and spread it over her knees, tucking in the edges like she was off on a ferry ride and worried about the draft.
Her hands were shaking. From the far bank, even at this distance, Alsen could see it. The rest of her was carved from calm, but her hands betrayed her, fumbling twice on a corner of the blanket before she got it flat.
"I can stop this." Alsen's voice came out strange, distant. "I can—" He couldn't and he knew that.
"And then what?" Luna's tone dropped. "You drag the boat back with a spell. Great. She climbs right back in. And if she doesn't, then they get the grandma next door." Her eyes flicked to the bundle in the mother's arms. "She knew this would happen when her daughter got pregnant."
He knew. Fucking hell, he knew. "I can't just watch."
"I told you to keep walking."
"This sacrifice ensures the continued prosperity of our community, of our city, of the future generations that come after us," the official droned. "Let the waters carry away what the land cannot support."
Two guards set their poles against the skiff and pushed it into the current. The young mother screamed again, a sound that was going to live in Alsen's memory forever. The crowd watched in silence as the little boat caught the current and began to drift downstream.
Toward the waterfall.
Alsen could destroy the guards. He could drag the boat back to shore with telekinesis he hadn't even invented yet. He could…
He couldn't actually change anything. Not for the better.
The realization hit him like a physical blow. He'd come to this world wanting to help, wanting to be the change he wished to see. And here was suffering, right in front of him, dressed up in edicts and blankets and quiet dignity, and helping would only create more suffering.
The boat floated further downstream, growing smaller against the white rapids.
The old woman raised one hand. Not reaching for anything. Not calling for help.
Waving.
Luna stepped on the road.
Alsen couldn't speak. His throat had closed entirely.
The boat disappeared into the mist above the falls. He thought the hand was still up when it went. He couldn't be sure, and somehow that was worse.
Fuck.
The official was already joining the guards, preparing to leave. The crowd started dispersing. A few lingered a moment longer than the rest, watching the mist with faces Alsen couldn't see clearly.
The young couple remained at the water's edge, holding each other. Their grief was no longer a public ritual, but something they were going to have to live with for the rest of their lives.
He headed after Luna.
They walked in silence for over an hour.
The bridge, when they finally found it, was a sturdy stone construction wide enough for two carts to pass. A toll booth sat at the near end, manned by a bored-looking guard who waved them through without a comment when he saw they had nothing worth taxing.
Lucky, because they had nothing to pay with.
The village of Millrest spread before them on the other side. The same village, for which the ceremony had taken place. The same village whose prosperity for its future generations had just been preserved.
Alsen wanted to vomit from the thought alone.
People went about their daily lives. A blacksmith hammered at his forge. Children played in the street. A woman hung laundry to dry in the afternoon sun.
Normal. Ordinary. As if nothing had happened.
“How do they live with it?” Alsen finally managed. “Don’t answer.” He sighed. “I know. Everything in the world that was there when you were born is how things have always been.”
“And people are really good at getting used to things,” Luna added, voice flat.
“That doesn’t make it right.”
“Who decides that?” She looked at him with something that might have been sympathy. “Would you take it on yourself? To be the arbiter of what is right and what isn’t?”
“Yeah. I absolutely fucking would.”
She snorted. “Good.”
As if that was something to think about. His ideals weren’t something he would abandon at the first complicated point. If the dragons created a world where it was normal to have a mother drown because her daughter had a child when it didn’t fit into a quota, then he was going to kill the dragons.
There wasn’t anything more to it.
“You’ve seen worse, haven’t you?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I have spent almost my entire life on campaigns in various armies. I have seen a lot.”
“Why? There’s no way that wasn’t a choice.”
“Of course it was.” She flashed a smile, the dark tone vanishing.
“I used to tell myself that I did it because that was the only thing I could do. That after the war ends, I’ll go live a normal life.
But then the first campaign ended, the armies returned home, and I immediately joined a mercenary group to get into a new war.
Even broke up with my then partner in the process.
And now, I’m in a world that hasn’t seen a war in decades.
” She kicked a rock, the only one they met in half a mile.
“I’m fucked, and not the way I would enjoy it. ”
That helped him tear his mind from the ritual. “What makes you think there are no wars here?”
She spread her hands around, motioning over the countryside.
“We just walked over a major bridge, the only one in dozens of miles. There aren’t fortifications around it.
I didn’t see any self-destructive mechanism, not even a fort that would be watching over it.
Nobody around here has heard the word war since the dragons took over. ”
“Guess you really are fucked.”
She chuckled. “In the ass.” She raised an eyebrow. “How about you?”