Laboured breath, desperate. Tears tore down Genny’s cheeks as each pang stabbed deeper. She grasped her mother’s warm hand. Her aunt rasped something, encouragement maybe. Months of suspense finally ended in a nervous halt; only Genny’s weighted exhalations gave the room life and rhythm. No-one spoke.

Then, a first cry. Wide eyes melted into joy, relief.

“‘e’s beautiful.” Genny’s mother said, gifting the tiny, coddled boy to his mother. “What’ll ye name ‘im?”

Genny stalled for a few moments, overwhelmed.

“Petr,” she said, “after ‘is father. He’d want that.”

The yoke bit into him - not sharply, more of a slow, burning chew, like the hot mouths of two pigs were nibbling at his collar. The water sloshed around as he went up a step, fighting his balance.

Another hundred steps, barefooted, down a cobbled road, he finally came to his grandfather, whose large hands took the yoke from Petr’s back, setting it and the buckets down.

“Hrm,” the stocky, greying man exclaimed, “try notta spill a’much next time. Yer lucky this are enough.”

“Yes, pa.” Petr replied, sighing.

“C;mon, off wi’ya. Go muck out the ‘orses.”

Petr silently obeyed, rather enjoying the light-footed feeling after a weight is taken off one’s shoulders. On the way to the barn, he picked up one of the rusting shovels. Good tools were hard to come by these days, his grampa had said, all the iron was used for swords and armour.

As he began shoveling his thoughts drifted to the father he’d never met. He imagined him tall, with dark hair like himself, strong, with striking eyes. He’d fought outlanders and villains, and one day Petr would do the same.

The smell of his gramma’s soup drifted between the faecal scents. He decided to finish up quickly.

He finished up the bowl, licking his spoon to savour the last of the carroty mixture he’d been served. Gramma smiled from across the table. Their sheepdog whimpered a little, hoping for some scraps of whatever was left.

“Shush, Isaac,” Genny snapped toward the dog, and then, melting in a warm tone, she addressed her son: “All done?”

Petr nodded and smiled a little in reply, setting his feet down on the stony floor, transporting his bowl over to the stack on the kitchen’s wood-slab counter.

“Ma…” Petr started.
“Yes?” Genny replied, softly.
“...when’ll I see dad?” the boy asked, with an itching tone.

Genny swallowed, and Gramma frowned, exhaling sharply and involuntarily flexing her twiglike fingers. Her wrinkled skin slid like a loose glove.

A reply began: “He’s still at the Dusk portal, Petr-”
“And you know ‘at,” Gramma cut in, “you know it upsets your ma when you talk about /’im/.”
“Mama, really, it’s okay, really-” Genny tried to say.
“No, no it ain’t. Petr, get in bed,” she snapped, “y’need to be working tomorrow.”

Petr dragged himself away, slowly, glancing quickly at his mother before forming a resigned scowl. He scratched Isaac’s ears on the way past, trudging up the stairs to his room.

A little too hot - summer barely gone, yet still some of its fire dwindled in the air, keeping Petr just awake.

“You can’t be stringin’ him along like this, Genny! Hi ‘pa may never come back, and you know ‘at!”
“Ma, I know.” Genny’s voice echoed, “But I can’t just be leavin’ him with no hope!”

The sharp reverbations faded until they were barely mumbles, and Petr drifted away.

Tap, tap, tap, went his knobbly staff on the fence, within which a small herd of barely-concerned sheep pottered about their business.

“Now you can be looking after ‘em for the rest of the day, arright?” asked Yorel, and portly, red-faced farmer from over the way.
“O’course,” Petr replied.

Yorel waddled off after nodding, and Petr moved to open the enclosure’s gate, to allow the flock out to pasture.

He valued days like this, now, away from his grandmother and mother bickering. Sheep and sheepdogs often tended to be better company than people - for all their simplicity and stupidity they knew how to be content.

Many days and nights passed like this for Petr - the one constant in years of demanding seasons and insufficient harvests. Even as the world around him became more unsettled - fighting, argument, even civil war - it all seemed far further away when he stood in the fields, keeping watch for him and his.

The first handful of dirt was his, prompting a pattering noise as it fell upon the beech box. Yorel, looking older than ever, let off a rounded exhalation, nodding to Petr and passing him a spade to get working.

It was his grandparents who went first - the cold winters only got colder, and Petr’s work yielded fewer and fewer fruits as the harvests dwindled year on year. They went quietly, in a style quite far from their quarreling and screechy laughter.

Now, his mother. Whether it was a broken heart or some other ailment no-one could say. Her last days were rife with confusion and fear - something no mother’s child should ever have to witness. A stone hand squeezed at his fluttering heart, and a weight like two full yokes set upon his shoulders - a little more as each little mound of earth slid into the grave.

Yorel stayed until Petr had finished, and they walked away, in silence, to a bleeding sunset.

Gazing back at the decayed remains of his life, Petr checked his pockets. Everything that mattered, everything he could carry without too much difficulty.

“It’ll be the best thing for a young man like you, there’ll always be work in the towns for an able one such as yerself.” Yorel had said, the night before.

A last risk, Petr thought, or maybe a first. Each step, he hoped, took him closer to a more meaningful existence, devoid of the nothingness that now consumed his every breath.

“Minted, you know it. There’s always people up’n’daan this route!”

Petr frowned critically at the copper-topped fellow that sat opposite him in the cart. The caravans definitely had their characters, and this… entrepreneur, Baell, was no exception.

He finally replied, “It’d be quite dear to do.”
“True, but we’d make it back within the month!”

He had a point. “Right, tell me more.”

Baell looked a tad shocked, as though he were expecting more of a fight; even then, it flashed away into a smirk as he hushly presented his plans.

Checking the humming stills one last time, Petr made his way back to the bar of the main room. Baell, smiled as he entered, throwing up his hands and spinning slowly, as if to take the room in for the first time (in truth, he hadn’t been quiet about it in some time).

“Look at this place! Magnificent!” Baell projected, nearly shouting into the room.
“It’ll do,” Petr half-chuckled.

Good company, the odd passing musician - it had the tones of a good, calm life. After all, why roam the hills and valleys with no guarantee of safety or comfort? Especially not in a place such as this - an inn - where the world would come right to his doorstep.

And it continued much as Petr thought. He still longed, some days, for those times sitting in the fields, counting sheep and stars. A little flock of spirits and beers were the only kind he meditated over now. Some of the mightier liquids bubbled away in vessels of copper; the calmer ales sat in oaken barrels, eminating a malty scent.

Given a month or two, the first of these would be ready to drink and sell, and would lessen their dependency on the other brewers around. For now, he let himself get lost in the little ritual of preparation, as he had done in his many days and nights under the sun and stars with his flocks.

Busy, buzzing, full, every moment hectic and attempting to unbalance the threads of organisation which tried to tie down the clamour of wants and issues. The inn had never been more full - people moving away, soldiers moving toward; the dusk portal’s grand, horrific reopening had prompted reactionary surges. Fight and flight predominated the emotions in the large, dim room. There was little to see between the bravado of fighting men and the silence and the weeping of the old and the fleeing.

He'd emptied the last barrel this morning - nigh else than dregs remained in the whole of his set-up, and he had no time to make any more. So long for his little fold, and the only thing that kept him calmed with everything around in turmoil.

Petr had voiced his concerns: “Don’t you think we should move, soon? More and more people everyday.”
“Are you kidding?” Baell had scowled back, “We’re making a killing here!”
“What if we’re next?”
“We won’t be, look at all these soldiers!”

Crack.

A generally unwelcome sound. Petr drew back his fist, his knuckles shining with another man’s blood. The cocky soldier stumbled back into his friend’s arms, his eyes rolling back.

At that moment, a shout cut through the din, the cheering and the booing.

“YOU!” a harsh-edged voice shouted.

Petr kept up his defence, looking for the source of the sound.

And he stepped out, one of the alliance officers of the county’s lord’s forces: “You’re strong,” he said, looking at Petr down his nose, “and we need men like you, instead of feeble fools like this who can’t pick their fights.”

Petr frowned, but it quickly turned to a expression of cynical surprise as the officer produced not one, but /two/ gold crowns from a pocket.

“We leave at first light tomorrow. It’s up to you whether you join us.”

Baell had shouted and screamed at him not to leave, and Petr had not listened. He thought it at least better to fight, like his estranged father, than to sit around in that inn waiting for the day some raiders knocked on its oaken door.

He’d been told most of the farmhands, not unlike him, had gone with the first wave, and hadn’t returned. The column he trudged with was composed of civil war veterans - professionals, and a horde of mostly scrawny townies - not exactly the people you’d want fighting your corner. A lot of them were dressed up in whatever armour they could afford, not that it’d do them much good; they look barely trained, some very scared. Some better than none, Petr thought, noting his lack of much in the way of protection - little but callouses and raw strength he’d gleaned from years of hard labour and heavy lifting.

All he’d had time to procure in the way of gear was a common-or-garden sword - nothing special, but robust enough.

Ever since the dusk portal had re-opened, tensions had done nothing but escalate. Even during the formation of the alliance, breakaway groups, bandits, raiders, rebels... entire towns fought against, killed each other. The reasons were always unclear, complicated, mired in verbosity and off reasoning.

He knew some of the fields they wandered past. Home again, maybe, but not for long.

Cacophony. The air rang with steel upon steel, fires cracked and billowed oily black smoke - only exacerbated by the tapping of thousands of droplets falling from an open, but obscured, heaven.

Aye, it would need to be open, was his one clear thought, where else could the souls of the lost otherwise leave to?

They'd come in the night, the raiders, ambushed them as they slept. The few that remained were woken by the screams of their brothers-in-arms. The very forces they'd been sent to subdue had struck even before they'd even gotten close to their objective.

An order a loud cry: “Retreat!”

It was a familiar voice for sure, the officer. In all the confusion and loss, it was the only thing he could hold on to. There were too many, it was getting dark.

Each and every man - each and every of the remaining twenty or so, that was - dejected, shocked, determined, sickened, all at once. All were silent, hawk-eyes looking all around.

Worst fears had a way of emerging. The enemy's numbers were overwhelming, unexpected - how could so many have turned against each other, so quickly? How could they have broken through wave after wave of alliance soldiers?

Must be the Xitians, or Lucins, he thought. They must have done something. Mesalians alone could not have mustered this carnage.

Something unfamiliar was framed up ahead. Far-away horses whinnied and made a racket, in the distance a familiar character attempted to wrangle one into some sort of submission.

The inn. It was afire, and armoured figures bounded toward it. Cavalry emerged over the hill.

Raiders - perhaps the party that had ambushed them, or another one, in trying to cut them off, or even just pillaging as they were known to do, swelled and swarmed up ahead.

Baell was in the distance, and had gotten the horse under control, finally mounting, stringing another horse along, his current steed laden with sacks of what Petr guessed was whatever valuable things Baell was trying to save. The man and two horses started charging down the road, toward Petr and the other soldiers.

“No. No, damnit, no!” the officer blurted. The cavalrymen followed Baell and his horses.

The horsemen were upon the exhausted soldiers before they’d had any chance to prepare. Petr tried to catch one with his blade as it galloped past, only to have it knocked from his hand.

“Petr? Petr! Get on!”

Baell has wheeled round - it had been his intention all along to save his own skin by sacrificing the soldiers. But Petr had no time to quarrel, and jumped upon the horse that had been offered him.

They galloped, but their skinny steeds weren’t a match for the raiders' well-fed horses. Hot and sweaty and laden with sacks, they were losing ground quickly.

“We’ve got to get rid of the bags!” Petr shouted.
“What? No! It’s all we- I’ve got left in the world!” Baell countered.

Petr shook his head, loosing the heavy sacks from his mount.

“No! What’re you doing?” Baell screamed as he tried to slow his horse down to collect the bags.

A moment of judgement. Terrible, fatal probably, on Baell’s part - perhaps justice on Petr’s.

Petr looked ahead and willed the horse on. There were few places left to run, but he knew of at least one.

“That horse ain’t worth a thing.” said the Captain, “and I’m going to need something from you if you’re going to go anywhere on this boat. Limes, bread, rum. I can’t get them for nothin’.”
“Can’t I work for you?”
“I’ve a full crew and you’ve no experience. No coin, no voyage.”

News had come early yesterday evening, telling that the a Xitian general had emerged. Tensions were high, and everything was only set to get worse. He could only imagine that the alliance wouldn't be able to hold out for long if the Xitians decided to take a hostile stance: the best thing to do now was to get away from it all with as much haste as possible. Next month, next week, he might have even fewer options available.

He patted his pockets, frantically trying to look for something, anything to pay with. The he remembered.

He took out the two thick gold coins. The lord’s crowns; a little dulled, but all the more glorious now.