Cairn-Wakers

Overview

In the High Scars every cairn raised where an escort fell is a record, and the worst wrong an escort can do is bad guidance: a warning not given, a delay not declared. Cairn-Wakers are the dead of such failures. When the warning that would have saved them was never given, and the wrong never brought before a route moot, often because the escort's kindred was too strong to be called there, they rise at their cairns.

Appearance

A Cairn-Waker is seen as the escort or traveller it was, in felt and hide and dust, standing beside or upon its cairn with its back to the wind. Its outline is blurred, as though seen through blown dust, and its face is turned towards the direction the warning should have come from. Some show their deaths plainly: a body crushed by the slide, a throat dry with thirst. When a party comes near, the figure raises an arm across the road, the escort's sign to halt. It is silent, but the wind round it carries a sound like a runner's breath, hard and fast. The air smells of dust and cold stone.

Habitat and Range

They stand along the cairn chains, mostly on the exposed stretches between passward shelters, where slides, storms, and thirst killed parties a warning could have saved. They gather most at the old cairns whose names are fading, the cairns the Orcs call the tears of Ushkar the Ancestor-Warden.

Behaviour and Temperament

They try to give the warning that was never given to them. A Cairn-Waker stands across the route and will not let a party past; it means kindly, but it cannot tell the danger that killed it from a road that is now safe. Pushed past, it turns on the party with a fury like a storm off the faces: stones fly, animals bolt, and those who strike at it are struck down.

Abilities

Like other remnants they chill the air, sour the mood into dread, and move small things, and the strong ones move stones. They can scatter a herd or start a slide on loose scree. They grow stronger as their cairn's name fades.

Uses and Dangers

They are dangerous to any party that pushes past them and to any escort who lies about them. Wise captains halt when one rises, declare the delay aloud, and wait out the danger the Waker remembers, even if they cannot see it. A route moot that hears a Waker's case, and names the escort who failed to warn, is said to lay it to rest.

Lore and Belief

The escort kindreds say a Cairn-Waker is the Warden's grief made visible, and that reciting its name at the treaty-grounds keeps it quiet; cairn-line wardens re-cut the names on cairns where one has stood. Some say the Wakers stand thickest along routes where the escort orders care more for the names on the cairns than for the roads, and that they will rise all along the chains if the names are ever cut for show. Raiders who have tried to cross the High Scars against a Waker's raised arm are the subject of escort songs, all of which end on a slide.

Where It Appears

• The High Scars
• Overview: The Risen Dead