Chapter 9: The Screaming Man

It was many years before I ever found out what passed between Fellius and the commander. When the sun rose the next day, I can remember feeling as though we had all shared a very strange dream. South Hall’s citizenry went about their daily tasks with a sleepy sort of disbelief. How could carpenters cut wood and repair doors when a rider could come out of the Carrowind? How could millers grind grain when the end of the world was no longer right across the Vo river? As unknown as the Carrowind had been, it had been a constant. That constant had been shattered. What would happen next?

Nothing for a few days.

Life seemed to have returned to the kind of normal that almost makes a person disbelieve that it had been any other way. Then, Koffiant, a farmer to the north of town, was killed defending his cows from what must have been an enormous wolf pack. Tracks were everywhere. Neither farmer nor cows were anywhere to be found. Drunks at the Wolf’s Head tavern all had different theories about the rider, the wolves, and the Carrowind itself. Older people suggested a plot from Korskovyr, a beginning of a third war. No one in South Hall saw Fellius again. He must have ridden off during the night after telling the commander whatever he had told him. We all had questions about what had passed between them, but however strange it was, it wasn’t nearly as strange as what happened the day after the wolf attack.

My friends and I were pretending to have a battle, using sticks as swords, near the southern gate of the town. Clacks of the wood filled the bright, cold air. We had taken the spyglass with us again because of the excitement surrounding Fellius. My father had found out but been proud that his son had been among the first to know. Now, I had his blessing to take it with me, whenever I wanted.

Then, I heard Farras yell, “Another rider!”

We passed the spyglass around again, and sure enough, there was another blob. Was it a rider? No one could say. Had the distant spots always been riders? It was odd to consider the possibility that the world didn’t end beyond the Vo river. Maybe, it was another rider. Maybe, it was Fellius again. Maybe, it was something completely different.

“Let’s tell our parents,” said Kabil. “I don’t think we need to tell the commander first this time.”

We nodded and set off to tell the people of South Hall, again. But, we were surprised with what we found.

“Too busy,” said a Gely, a younger woman starting to mix flour for bread.

“Leave the soldiers to their jobs!” shouted Havren, as he fixed the hinge on his door.

This time, when we returned, far fewer people had come to see what was happening. Afraid to upset the commander, incurious because the result of the last blob, or whatever else, people found reasons to tell us that they wouldn’t be there. But this time, the spot on the horizon wasn’t getting bigger as quickly. This time, there wasn’t a sound like hoof beats. This time, there was a different sound.

“What is that, do you think?” asked a carpenter named Coltrice. “Do you hear it?”

The soldiers were squinting off into the horizon with us. Again, they had their swords at the ready and were casting glances in the direction of their commander. They were waiting for orders and less at ease this time. We could sense it. One of them edged toward the horse they’d brought with them, eyes fixed on the dot on the horizon.

“It sounds like yelling!” said someone else.

Caedrus was there; he was also squinting off into the distance and fighting with Sarcen to stay still. The puppy was pulling to get away.

“Sarcen, stop! Sarcen, no!” he commanded.

“It’s a man!” Farras said.

“I think he’s yelling, sergeant,” said one of the soldiers.

The commander nodded, staring.

“Fellius?” asked the soldier.

The commander shook his head.

The screams that came out of the stranger’s throat were almost unreal. As the murmurs of the crowd turned to that, the noise was so loud that anything murmured had to be repeated to be heard.

“Is he running from something?”

“I don't see anything chasing him!”

“Maybe, he's a monster!”

“It’s not natural to be able to scream this loud!”

“It’s a voenus! It only took the shape of a man! It’s here to do us harm!”

“Is he one of our soldiers?” someone asked the commander. “Why won’t you tell us what’s going on?”

The commander sighed as if he’d heard something stupid. Slowly, he stepped forward and addressed the crowd loudly. “I don’t know who this person is. He is not a soldier of Arkana. We need to talk to him to find out what he knows. We’ve all heard about the strange things happening lately. We know of the tragedy on that farmer’s farm. Whoever this man is, perhaps he has seen something in the Carrowind and can tell us more. Under King Clanton III, I am taking this situation in hand. No one, repeat: no one is to speak to this stranger if not given my permission.”

Again, we were being told what to do in our own town by outsiders. But, they were outsiders who were on orders from the king. What could we have done? What could we have said? These were men who were supposed to be on our side. I have weighed my own guilt with this for years, but I was merely a boy - a boy who knew nothing at the time. There is little, if any, possibility that anything would have changed, had I been more vocal. If that sounds as though I am trying to excuse myself for not having questioned a demand, believe me, I will bring myself to task for that at a different time.

The details of the screaming man’s face and body became clear as he drew nearer. He seemed real enough. His face and throat were red from screaming as he ran. It was too loud and too continuous to be any kind of regular human scream. Could screaming be the Power of Aizo? He had most of a beard, and his skin was blackened with soot or dirt. His forearms had been baked dark brown by the sun, and his clothes were filthy. The screaming kept up as he sprinted toward us. It was as if he planned to run right through us, he couldn't see us, or he had no plans to stop even for a second to explain what he was running toward or away from. The few farmers and bakers around me tightened their grips on their shovels and pitchforks and braced themselves for whatever danger this stranger might bring with him. And just like that, he was there.

He splashed through one of the shallow parts of the Vo, but his unbroken line of running did not change course to look for a better spot to cross. As the man slopped up the muddy bank, he made no attempt to slow down. His high-pitched scream was only broken by sudden gasps for breath, and the man's direction never faltered. He might have run to the Hyaltic Ocean at Arkana's western border.

One soldier's brawny outstretched arm appeared in front of the man and dropped him to the ground with nothing but the force of his own charge. What little of South Hall's population was present circled to see what was going to happen next, as the soldiers bent to pick the man up.

Before they could help him to his feet, he slashed out with his hands at everything nearby. The soldiers tried to hold him back, but through whatever wildness burned in his mind, he managed to continue clawing at whatever was within reach. All the while, his screaming continued. Finally, with a man at each limb, the soldiers held him down. The whole scene made me feel as though something was deeply wrong, considering their size and his. It didn’t feel real. The sergeant stepped over to where he might look the man in the face and began trying to talk to him.

“Who are you?” the sergeant demanded.

The screaming continued, dry and hoarse.

“Is something chasing you?”

Barely taking a breath, he continued to scream. He had been doing it for so long that my ears rang and my throat hurt at the rasping sound of his voice. How was he even doing it? How was it possible?

“Stop screaming, man. How can we help you if you won't tell us what's wrong?”

His only response was more screaming.

“I think his mind is gone, sergeant,” said the soldier at his right arm, the one who had knocked him down. His commander nodded. The man kept screaming and struggling against the four soldiers who had him pinned down. All the while, the sergeant stared at him, deep in thought.

“What do we do with him, sergeant?” asked the soldier. “He could be dangerous.”

“We'll have to see if he calms down,” the sergeant said. “We can't just let him go. There's no telling what he's done or what he'll do. Maybe he'll be recovered in the morning.”

“Where will we put him till then?” asked the soldier.

“I don't want him anywhere near my house,” said Auxt, the wiry blacksmith's apprentice, who actually somewhat looked like the man with his thin beard and sooty skin.

This caused the rest of South Hall to break into an argument about where the man should be kept. The soldiers attempted to quiet them down, but the crowd was insistent. There was nowhere in town that he could be allowed to stay.

“We'll tie him up for now,” said the sergeant. “If he can't be reasoned with, we may have to build him a pen or something of the sort.”

“I don't care what he says,” said Castila, the plump wife of a weaver, “I don't trust him.” She looked down on the man as if she would have stamped on him like a bug if she could have.

The soldiers tied up the screaming man, but he struggled with the ropes until his wrists and ankles bled. My friends and I, despite begging our parents, were not allowed to help. South Hall's citizens were confused by the soldiers' secrecy. A few people complained, but no one had any notions of doing anything more.

“You've got no idea what that man can do,” my father said. “You saw how many of the soldiers it took to keep him still. It's not safe.”

As a consolation, my father did allow me to go to the field with him and ride on the back of his oroc. I can still remember watching its muscles announce the movements I would feel from its back. I sometimes wondered if orocs were like cattle in the Carrowind. They certainly looked like them, aside from the horns and their size. My father sometimes rode one as he watched his workers collecting great armfuls of grain and loading them onto the back of a cart. I watched them, too, to make sure that they didn't try to leave any on the ground. My father told me that it was a common trick hired hands would try to play on landowners. Then, they could go out and pick up the grain for themselves at night after everyone had left the field. Sometimes, he said, it was just laziness. My father told me that the workers were a sneaky bunch and never to be trusted. Some of them, he claimed, were sure to be followers of Terre.

“A lot of poor people are followers of Terre,” my father said. “They do it because they hate how civilization and money make it obvious that they’re lazy. Since they can't have certain things, they don't think anyone should. They haven’t worked for Civius. They don’t know what sacrifice is.”

I remember him saying many of those exact words on many an occasion, and they always made sense to me when I was young. He was sure that Civius would never have tolerated the stupidity of those who remained poor, generation after generation in a country like Arkana. There was so much adventure to be had and so many riches to be won. A person had to be lazy, cowardly, or stupid to not have found his or her way there. My great-grandfather had started off as a simple farmer near Hammercleft, but, in his old age, had increased his wealth by giving grain to the King during one of the wars with Korskovyr. When the war ended, King Raykyn, my father's favorite king, rewarded all of the farmers who had supported the army, and our family reaped the benefits until my grandfather inherited some very large parcels of land.

This was passed on to my father. South Hall was a small town, but he was still very proud of it and had thought about trying to become mayor - when it grew to a size large enough for such a position. He could have been a very rich but unimportant man in Hammercleft. Instead, he wanted to be comfortable and more in a position to advance the kingdom and himself.

That was why we lived right in South Hall: my father wanted to get to know the townspeople so that they might like him enough to make him mayor. I am sure, now that it doesn’t matter, that we could have lived in Hammercleft, had a much better life, and for my parents, longer ones. My father was always talking about “knowing South Hall.” I am sure that his dreams were big, but looking back on it now, I have to wonder – how much could there really have been to know?

The screaming man never stopped screaming nor fighting. He nearly broke loose from the pen the soldiers had made by throwing himself against the wooden frame over and over again. Eventually, after being unable to sleep for almost a full night, one of them struck him in the head so hard that the night watchman who saw it told everyone that the man was dead. He awoke the next morning and continued to scream, pulling on the wooden poles that kept him imprisoned. After having heard that he was dead, the already terrified citizenry were now under the impression that he could come back to life.

“He’s not a voenus! Not even they can come back to life!”

“He’s something even more horrible! Why don’t they just burn him where he is!?”

Meanwhile, the man gave no clue that he understood any of this. Instead, his frantic screaming continued. He would flail his arms wildly through the side of the pen at anyone who would come into view or try to walk past.

The sergeant announced a day later that the people of South Hall were to give food and water for several of the soldiers who were going to go into the closest part of the Carrowind to see if they could find out what the man had seen or done to make him behave in such a way. He might be a murderer, or he may have seen something that could be a threat to South Hall or even all of Arkana. We were given a day to get the supplies ready, and the soldiers were to leave the next morning.

All of South Hall was full of thoughts about what was going on.

“I heard that the sergeant said that the man's a murderer,” said Zera, one of the gardener women.

“The screaming man was talking in his sleep about gold in the Carrowind when they knocked him out the other night. The soldiers are going to get it,” said Stroff, one of the older hands from my father's fields.

“The man came from a land of giants and he will grow into one when he stops screaming,” said Pyala, my oldest cousin. “Then, he's going to eat you.” She giggled at me and then shooed me, “Now go away and enjoy your last days above ground.” Afterwards, she continued talking to Auxt.

“He's a demon Terre sent to kill the king,” said Castila. “I know it, and there's no sense trying to tell me that it's not true because I had a dream about it last night.”

“He is a voenus! Why won’t anyone listen to me? You can tell they’ve just changed when there’s the smell of iron on the wind!” said Garren. “He came through the wall of the pen and stuck one of the soldiers in it instead. Now all the soldier can do is scream, while the screaming man is acting like a soldier! Everyone knows how voenuses work!”

And, everyone did, but no one believed Garren because no one had ever seen a scrap of proof that they were real. We believed in them, like a lot of things, but we believed in them at a distance.

There was plenty to talk about all day while my friends and I got supplies ready for the soldiers who would do whatever they were going to do in the Carrowind in the morning. However, they never made it any farther east than their log outpost.