Their path was lined with crosses.
Thousands of crosses, in every conceivable shape and size, lay scattered along both sides of the roadway like the pieces of some insane, half-finished fence. Some stood upright; some tilted at dangerous angles or lay on their sides. For every ornate metal marker showing clear signs of craftsmanship there were dozens, hundreds of hastily-erected bits of wood that wouldn’t even be recognizable as crosses if not for the presence of their brethren.
Jacob walked alongside the cart, holding the fractured base of a wooden cross he’d pulled from the ground as they passed. He could just make out the words “WE MISS YOU” scrawled on the bottom in fading black marker.
“So many dead,” he said, steadying himself with one arm against the cart. “Did they bury them standing upright, do you think?”
From his seat atop the cart, Cormac scoffed, shaking his head. A large fly had settled on his broad forehead; he plucked it from the air as if fled and squeezed it, then rubbed his palm on the edge of his coat. Jacob felt along the bottom of the cross where it had been sharpened to a point and wondered, not for the first time, if he would have to kill his new employer.
“There is no one buried here.” The wizard’s voice boomed like distant thunder. “The people who walked this road before us left these markers for a different purpose.”
Jacob scratched his cheek - three weeks on the road had left him with a face full of stubble - and dropped the cross back to the ground. “Why’d they leave these, then? They were running for their lives. Why would they bother to stop?”
“By the time these were planted, there was nowhere left to run,” the wizard said, his jowls quivering. “They left these markers behind to remind us - not us specifically, mind you, just whoever might be left - that they were here. That their loved ones were here, the ones that were taken by the Fever. They wanted us to remember their names.”
Jacob scanned the sides of the road, where the asphalt was cracked and torn in chunks by encroaching weeds. If the markers had once born legends, they were as blank as still water now. “Seems they didn’t do a very good job,” he finally said.
“Yes,” Cormac said with a wicked grin. “They failed.”
