(As recounted by Aurelio)
The old man rose from his chair and walked to the window. The night outside was deep and starless; a fitting mirror for the memory he was about to unspool. The Scholar waited, quill poised, saying nothing. He had learned that silence was the best offering he could give.
"The sea," Aurelio said finally, his back still turned, "is a liar. It promises freedom, but it delivers only isolation. We learned that truth on the voyage to the Grove. And we learned it again on the road to the coast. But the sea is also a witness. It remembers everything. Every tear, every drop of blood, every whispered prayer. When we finally reached the shore, the sea was waiting for us. And it was not pleased with what it saw."
He turned, his face half in shadow.
"The plague had reached the coast before we did."
— Memory —
The port town of Ostia had once been a bustling hub of trade; a place where Italian wines met African grain and Spanish wool. The docks had been crowded with ships, the streets with merchants, the taverns with sailors telling tales of distant lands.
Now it was a morgue.
The stench hit them first; a thick, cloying sweetness that clung to the back of the throat and made the eyes water. It was the smell of death left too long in the sun. Bodies lay in the gutters, covered with flies, their skin mottled with that terrible green-black discoloration. Doors hung open, their inhabitants fled or dead. The only sounds were the cries of gulls and the low, mournful moan of the wind through empty streets.
"Mother of God," Riccio whispered, crossing himself.
"God has nothing to do with this," Philippe said, his French accent sharper than usual. "This is the work of men. And we are looking at the result."
Gerald stood at the head of the column, his face unreadable. "We cannot stay here. The sickness is in the air."
"The sickness is everywhere," Liam said. "But you are right; we should not linger. Find the ships and leave."
They moved through the town in a loose formation, their cloaks pulled over their mouths and noses. The Norsemen, who had faced storms and sea monsters and the fury of their own gods, looked unnerved. This was a different kind of enemy; one that did not fight with steel or song, but with silence and decay.
The docks were as bad as the streets. Ships sat at anchor, their decks empty, their sails furled. A few had been burned; perhaps by survivors trying to contain the plague, perhaps by looters trying to hide their crimes. Among the wreckage, one vessel stood out. It was a carrack, a deep-bellied merchant ship, its hull painted with faded lilies; French, by the look of it.
"That one," Philippe said, pointing. "I know her captain. He is a stubborn old Breton who would not abandon his ship for anything short of the apocalypse. If he is not here..."
"Then the plague took him," Aurelio finished. "But the ship is sound. We can use it."
They boarded the carrack with grim efficiency. The Norsemen, accustomed to longships, found the high sides and deep hold awkward, but they adapted quickly. Gerald took command of the deck, assigning lookouts and setting a skeleton crew to the sails. Philippe disappeared below to search for supplies; he emerged with a crate of salted fish, a barrel of fresh water, and a look of profound relief.
"The captain's log," he said, holding up a leather-bound book. "He recorded everything. The first cases of the plague. The quarantine. The desperate flight. He died writing; the last entry is dated three days ago."
"What does it say?" Aurelio asked.
Philippe opened the log and read aloud. His voice was steady, but his hands trembled.
"'The sickness spreads faster than we can run. The Cabal's weapon has turned against them, but that does not comfort the dying. I have sent my crew inland, to seek higher ground. I remain. This ship is my home. I will not abandon her. If you find this, know that the plague is not spread by touch alone; it is in the breath, in the wind, in the very air of the towns. Stay away from the living. Stay away from the dead. Trust no one. God save us all.'"
The silence that followed was absolute.
"Stay away from the living," Gerald repeated. "How? We need food. We need water. We need to find out who is still fighting."
"We cannot save everyone," Liam said. "We can only save ourselves. And then, when we have a cure, we can save the rest."
"And if there is no cure?"
Liam met his gaze. "Then we build something new. On the ashes of the old."
They sailed at dusk, leaving Ostia behind like a bad dream. The wind was favorable, pushing them south toward the Italian coast, toward the remnants of Giovanni's network and whatever allies might still be breathing. But the mood on the ship was not one of escape; it was one of suspension. They were not fleeing to something; they were fleeing from everything.
Aurelio stood at the prow, watching the sunset bleed into the sea. Cecilia came to stand beside him, her footsteps soft on the wooden deck.
"You are thinking about them," she said. "Your family."
"I am thinking about everyone," he replied. "The dead. The dying. The ones who will die tomorrow because we could not save them today."
"That is a heavy burden."
"It is the only burden that matters."
She was silent for a moment. Then she reached out and took his hand. Her fingers were warm, and he realized that the coldness he had felt at the Grove was truly gone. She was herself again. Broken, perhaps, but whole.
"I have been thinking about the Shade," she said. "About what it wanted. What it was trying to do."
"The Ashen Rite. The Fourth Empire."
"Yes. But also something else. Something older." She looked out at the darkening sea. "The Shade was not just a spirit; it was a memory. A memory of a world before this one, when empires rose and fell like tides. It wanted to bring that world back. Not because it was better, but because it was familiar. Because it understood it."
"And we are not familiar?"
"We are chaos," she said. "We are unpredictable. We love and we hate and we change our minds. The Shade could not comprehend that. It saw us as variables to be controlled, not as people to be understood."
Aurelio considered this. "Then how did we beat it?"
"Because we did not try to understand it. We overwhelmed it. With love. With memory. With the stubborn refusal to give up." She squeezed his hand. "You taught it something, Aurelio. You taught it that some things cannot be calculated."
He wanted to believe her. He wanted to believe that their victory had been more than luck, more than a lucky break in the chaos of battle. But the skeptic in him, the soldier who had seen too much, whispered that the Shade was not dead; only dormant. And that one day, it would return.
But that was a fear for another day. Tonight, there was only the sea, the stars, and the woman beside him.
Below deck, the Norsemen gathered around a lantern, their faces drawn and weary. Rurik sat with his back against a barrel, his wounded leg stretched out before him. Gunnar paced the narrow space, his missing ear a raw, red wound.
"We cannot go back to the North," Gunnar said. "Not yet. The plague will follow us. It will destroy our villages, our families, everything we have built."
"Then we go forward," Rurik said. "To Vinland. As the boy promised."
"The boy is not a boy anymore," Gunnar said, his voice grudging. "He fought well at the Grove. He led well. Perhaps... perhaps he is what we need."
Rurik grunted. "I do not trust him. He has too much of his mother in him; too much softness."
"And too much of his father in him; too much stubbornness. Perhaps that is the point." Gunnar stopped pacing. "He is both. Neither. A bridge. We have been fighting each other for so long that we forgot we were fighting the same enemy."
"The Cabal."
"The Cabal. The plague. The end of everything." Gunnar sat down heavily. "I am tired, Rurik. Tired of burying my young men. Tired of watching the world burn. If the boy can give us a new world, a clean world, I will follow him. Even if it means sailing to the edge of the map."
Rurik was silent for a long moment. Then he extended his hand.
"Then we follow him together. Danes and Norwegians. One people, one purpose."
Gunnar took his hand. The grip was firm, and for the first time in years, the two old enemies looked at each other without hatred.
— Present —
The old man returned to his chair, settling into it with a sigh. The fire had been rebuilt, and the flames cast a warm, golden light across the room.
"We sailed for three more days," he said. "The plague followed us in whispers and rumors. Every port we passed was a graveyard. Every village we saw was empty. The world was dying, and we were sailing through the corpse."
He opened Gerald's journal to a page that showed a rough map of the Italian coast, with X's marking the places they had seen.
"But we kept sailing. Because giving up was not an option. And eventually, we found something that gave us hope."
He looked at the Scholar, his eyes holding a faint, weary light.
"A fortress on a hill. Still standing. Still fighting. Giovanni's old network, held together by a woman with iron in her spine and fire in her heart."
He closed the journal.
"Her name was Donata. You remember her; the blacksmith from the Anvil. She had survived. And she had been waiting for us."
The Scholar leaned forward.
"Shall I tell you about Donata?"