The Invasion of the Tearling

by Erika Johansen

  My gift to you, Queen Kelsea, he thought, and dropped his hand toward the ground.

  Axes hissed through the air, and then the stillness of the morning wrenched wide open, the hillside echoing with an enormous creaking and cracking as the arms of the catapults realized they were free. One by one they levered upward, gaining speed as they lunged into the sky, and Hall felt his heart lift in a pure joy that never evaporated, a joy he’d felt even as a small child testing his first rabbit trap.

  My design! It works!

  The arms of the catapults reached their limits and halted, with a boom that echoed across the hillside. That would wake the Mort, but it was already too late.

  Hall socketed his spyglass and followed the progress of the light-blue bundles as they hurtled toward the Mort camp. They reached their zenith and began to drop, seventy-five of them in all, the sky-blue parachutes unraveling as they caught the wind, their canvas burdens swinging innocuously in the breeze.

  The Mort were moving about now. Hall spied knots of activity: soldiers emerging from tents with weapons, sentries withdrawing into the camp in preparation for an attack.

  “Jasper!” he called. “Two minutes!”

  Jasper nodded and began to pull the hoods from his hawks, feeding each bird a small piece of meat. Major Caffrey, with his uncanny gift for recognizing a dependable mercenary, had found Jasper in a Mort border village three weeks ago. Hall didn’t like Mort hawks any more now than he had as a child, when the birds used to swoop across the hillside looking for easy prey, but he still had to admire Jasper’s skill with his charges. The hawks watched their handler attentively, heads cocked, like dogs waiting for their master to throw a stick.

  A warning shout went up from the Mort camp. They had spotted the parachutes, which dropped faster now as wind resistance decreased. Hall watched through his spyglass, counting under his breath, as the first bundle disappeared behind one of the tents. Twelve seconds had elapsed when the first scream echoed across the flats.

  More of the parachutes descended on the camp. One landed on an ordnance wagon, and Hall watched, fascinated despite himself, as the ropes relaxed. The bundle shivered for a moment, then sprang open as five furious rattlesnakes realized they were free. Their mottled skins curled and streaked over the pikes and arrows, dropping from the wagon and disappearing from sight.

  Screams echoed against the hillside, and in less than a minute, the camp devolved into utter chaos. Soldiers ran into each other; half-dressed men stabbed wildly at their own feet with swords. Some tried to climb to higher ground, the tops of wagons and tents, even each other’s backs. But most of them fled for the boundaries of the camp, desperate to get clear. Officers shouted orders, to no avail; panic had taken hold, and now the Mort army began to pour from the camp on all sides, fleeing west toward the Border Hills or away to the east and south, across the flats. Some even sprinted mindlessly north and splashed into the shallows of Lake Karczmar. They had no armor or weapons; many were stark naked. Several had cheeks still covered with shaving cream.

  “Jasper!” Hall called. “Time!”

  One by one, Jasper coaxed his hawks onto the thick leather glove that covered his arm from thumb to shoulder and sent them into the air. Hall’s men watched the birds uneasily as they gained altitude, but the hawks were well trained; they ignored the Tear soldiers entirely, soaring down the hillside toward the Mort camp. They dove directly into the exodus of men who streamed from the southern and eastern ends of the campsite, talons opening as they dropped, and Hall watched the first of them seize the neck of a fleeing man who wore only a half-buttoned pair of trousers. The hawk ripped out his jugular, spraying the morning sunlight with a fine mist of blood.

  On the west side of the camp, wave after wave of Mort soldiers sprinted mindlessly toward the trees at the foot of the hillside. But fifty Tear archers were scattered among the treetops, and now the Mort went down in droves, their bodies riddled with arrows, sinking into the mud of the flats. New screams came from the lake; the men who’d sought shelter there had discovered their error and now they thrashed back toward the shore, bellowing in pain. Hall smiled with a touch of nostalgia. Going into the lake was a rite of passage among the children of Idyllwild, and Hall still had the scars on his legs to prove it.

  By now the bulk of the Mort army had deserted the camp. Hall cast a regretful eye toward the ten cannons, which sat entirely unattended. But there was no way to get to them now; everywhere he looked, rattlesnakes slithered among the tents, seeking a good place to nest. He wondered where General Genot was, whether he had fled along with his men, whether he could be one of the hundreds of corpses lying piled at the bottom of the slope. Hall had developed a healthy respect for Genot, but he knew the man’s limitations, many of the same limitations that Bermond suffered himself. Genot wanted his warfare quiet and rational. He didn’t make allowances for extraordinary bravado or crushing incompetence. Yet Hall knew that any army was riddled with such anomalies.

  “Jasper!” he called. “Your birds have done good work. Bring them back.”

  Jasper gave a loud, piercing whistle and waited, tightening the straps that bound the leather glove to his forearm. Within seconds, the hawks began to soar back in, circling over the hilltop. Jasper whistled intermittently, a different note each time, and one by one each bird dropped to settle on his forearm, where it was rewarded with several pieces of rabbit before being hooded and placed back on the perch.

  “Pull the archers,” Hall told Blaser. “And find Emmett. Have him send messengers to the General and the Queen.”

  “What message, sir?”

  “Tell them I’ve bought us time. At least two weeks until the Mort can regroup.”

  Blaser departed, and Hall turned back to stare across the surface of Lake Karczmar, a blinding sheet of red fire in the rising sun. This sight, which used to fill him with longing as a child, now seemed like a terrible warning. The Mort were scattered, true, but not for long, and if Hall’s men lost the hillside, there was nothing to prevent the Mort from shredding Bermond’s carefully assembled defensive lines. Just over the hill sprawled the Almont Plain: thousands of square miles of flat land with little room for maneuver, its farms and villages isolated and defenseless. The Mort had four times the numbers, twice the quality of arms, and if they made it down into the Almont, there was only one endgame: slaughter.

  Ewen had been the Keep’s Jailor for several years, ever since his Da retired out of the job, and in all that time, he had never had a prisoner that he considered truly dangerous. Most of them had been men who disagreed with the Regent, and these men generally entered the dungeons too starved and beaten to do more than totter into their cells and collapse. Several of them had died in Ewen’s care, although Da had told him that he was not to blame. Ewen had disliked coming in and finding their bodies cold on their cots, but the Regent hadn’t seemed to care either way. One night the Regent had even marched down the dungeon steps dragging one of his own women, a red-haired lady so beautiful that she seemed like something out of one of Da’s fairy stories. But she had a rope tied around her neck. The Regent led her into a cage himself, calling her bad names the entire way, and snarled at Ewen, “No food or water! She doesn’t come out until I say!”

  Ewen didn’t like having a woman prisoner. She did not talk or even weep, only gazed stonily at the wall of her cell. Ignoring the Regent’s orders, Ewen had given her food and water, keeping a careful eye on the clock. He could tell that the rope around her neck was hurting her, and finally, unable to bear it any longer, he went in and loosened the noose. He wished he was a healer, able to fix the circle of raw red flesh on her throat, but Da had taught him only the most basic first aid, for cuts and such. Da had always been patient with Ewen’s slowness, even when it caused trouble. But it didn’t take a smart brain to keep a woman alive for the night, and Da would have been disappointed in Ewen had he failed. When the Regent came to collect the woman the next day, Ewen had felt great relief. The Regent had said he wa
s sorry, but the woman had swept out of the dungeon without giving him so much as a glance.

  Ever since the new Queen took the throne, there hadn’t been much for Ewen to do. The Queen had freed all of the Regent’s prisoners, which confused Ewen, but Da had explained that the Regent liked to put men in the dungeon for saying things he didn’t like, and the Queen only put men in the dungeon for doing bad things. Da said this was sensible, and after thinking it over for a while, Ewen decided that Da was right.

  Twenty-seven days ago (Ewen had noted it in the book), three Queen’s Guards had burst into the dungeon leading a bound prisoner, a grey-haired man who looked exhausted but—Ewen noted gratefully—uninjured. The three guards didn’t ask Ewen’s permission before hauling the prisoner through the open door of Cell Three, but Ewen didn’t mind. He’d never been so close to Queen’s Guards before, but he’d heard all about them from Da: they protected the Queen from danger. To Ewen, this sounded like the most wonderful and important job in the world. He was grateful to be Head Jailor, but if he’d just been born smarter, he would have wanted most of all to be one of these tall, hard men in their grey cloaks.

  “Treat him well,” ordered the leader, a man with a head of bright red hair. “Queen’s orders.”

  Though the guard’s hair fascinated him, Ewen tried not to stare, for he didn’t like it when people stared at him. He locked the cell, noting that the prisoner had already lain down on the cot and closed his eyes.

  “What’s his name and crime, sir? I have to write it in the book.”

  “Javel. His crime is treason.” The red-haired leader stared through the cage bars for a moment, then shook his head. Ewen watched as the men tromped off toward the stairwell, their voices drifting down the hallway behind them.

  “I’d have cut his throat.”

  “Is he safe with the dummy, you think?”

  “That’s between the Queen and the Mace.”

  “He must know his job. No one’s ever escaped.”

  “Still, she can’t have an idiot as a jailor forever.”

  Ewen flinched at the word. Bullies used to call him that, before he got so big, and he had learned to allow the word to roll right off him, but it hurt more from a Queen’s Guard. And now he had something new and terrible to think about: the possibility of being replaced. When Da had retired, Da had gone to speak directly to the Regent, to make sure that Ewen could stay on. But Ewen didn’t think Da had ever spoken to the Queen.

  The new prisoner, Javel, was one of the easiest charges Ewen had ever had. He barely spoke, only a few words to tell Ewen when he had finished his meals or run out of water or needed the bucket emptied. For long hours Ewen even forgot that Javel was there, but then Ewen could think of little but being dismissed from his post. What would he do if that happened? He couldn’t even bring himself to tell Da what the Queen’s Guard had called him. He didn’t want Da to know.

  Five days after Javel came to the dungeon, three more Queen’s Guards stomped down the stairs. One of them was Lazarus of the Mace, a recognizable figure even to Ewen, who rarely left his cells. Ewen had heard plenty of stories about the Mace from Da, who claimed that the Mace was fairy-born, that no cell would hold him. (“A jailor’s nightmare, Ew!” Da would cackle over his tea.) If the other Queen’s Guards had been impressive, the Mace was ten times so, and Ewen studied him as closely as he dared. The Captain of Guard in his dungeon! He couldn’t wait to tell Da.

  The other two guards carried a prisoner between them like a sack of grain, and after Ewen unlocked Cell One, they threw the man on the cot. The Mace stood looking at the prisoner for what seemed to Ewen a very long time. Finally he straightened, cleared something deep in his throat, and spat, a great glob of yellow slime that landed square on the prisoner’s cheek.

  Ewen thought this unkind; whatever the man’s crime, surely he had suffered enough. He was a miserable, shriveled creature, starved and dehydrated. Mud had caked into the thick welts over his legs and torso. More welts, deep red rivets, crossed his wrists. Great hanks of hair had been pulled from his head, leaving patches of scabbed flesh. Ewen couldn’t imagine what had happened to him.

  The Mace turned to Ewen and snapped his fingers. “Jailor!”

  Ewen stepped forward, trying to stand as tall as he could. Da had chosen Ewen as his apprentice, even over Ewen’s smarter brothers, for exactly this reason: Ewen was big and strong. But he still only came up to the Mace’s nose. He wondered if the Mace knew he was slow.

  “You watch this one closely, Jailor. No visitors. No little field trips outside the cell for exercise. Nothing.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ewen replied, wide-eyed, and watched the group of guards exit the dungeon. No one called him any names this time, but it was only after they’d departed that Ewen realized he had forgotten to ask for the man’s name and crime for the book. Stupid! The Mace would surely notice such things.

  The next day, Da had come to visit. Ewen was tending the new prisoner as best he could, though the man’s wounds were well beyond the power of anything but time or magic. But Da had taken one look at the man on his cot and spat, just like the Mace.

  “Don’t bother trying to cure this bastard, Ew.”

  “Who is he?”

  “A carpenter.” Da’s bald head gleamed, even in the dim torchlight, and Ewen saw with some uneasiness that the skin of Da’s forehead was getting thin, like linen. Even Da would die eventually, Ewen knew that, deep in a dark place in his mind. “A builder.”

  “What did he build, Da?”

  “Cages,” Da replied shortly. “Be very careful, Ew.”

  Ewen looked around, confused. The dungeon was full of cages. But Da didn’t seem to want to talk about it, and so Ewen stored the facts in his mind alongside the rest of the mysteries he didn’t understand. Once in a while, usually when Ewen wasn’t even trying, he would solve a mystery, and that was a great and extraordinary feeling, the way he imagined birds would feel as they swooped across the sky. But no matter how he stared at the man in the cell, no answers were forthcoming.

  After that, Ewen thought he was prepared for anyone to enter his dungeon, but he was wrong. Two days before, two men in the black uniform of the Tear army had burst in, dragging a woman between them. But this was no fancy woman like the Regent’s redhead; she spat and kicked, shouting curses at the two men who dragged on her arms. Ewen had never seen anything like her. She seemed all white, from head to toe, as if her flesh had lost all of its color. Her hair was similarly faded, like hay that had sat too long in the sunlight. Even her dress was white, though Ewen thought it might once have been light blue. She looked like a ghost. The soldiers tried to force her through the open door of Cell Two, but she grabbed at the bars and hung on.

  “Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be,” the taller soldier panted.

  “Fuck you, you limp prawn!”

  The soldier kept patient pressure on her hands, trying to peel back her locked fingers, while the other soldier worked on hauling her into the cage. Ewen hung back, not sure whether to get involved. The woman’s eyes fell on him, and he went cold inside. Her irises were circled pink, but deep in the center was a blue so light that it glittered like ice. Ewen saw something terrible there, animal and sick. The woman opened her mouth, and Ewen knew what was coming, even before she spoke.

  “I know all about you, boy. You’re the halfwit.”

  “Give us some help, for Christ’s sake!” one of the soldiers snarled.

  Ewen jumped forward. He didn’t want to touch any part of the ghost-woman, so he took hold of her dress and began to tug her backward. With both soldiers free to work on her fingers, they finally succeeded in prying her loose from the bars and then flung her into the cage, where she ran into the cot and fell to the ground. Ewen was barely able to get the door closed before the woman hurled herself against the bars, spewing more curses at the three of them.

  “Christ, what a job!” one of the soldiers muttered. He wiped his brow, where a mole grew like a sm
all mushroom. “Locked in, though, she shouldn’t give you too much trouble. She’s blind as a mouse.”

  “Only watch out when the owl comes hunting,” the other remarked, and they chuckled together.

  “What’s her name and crime?”

  “Brenna. Her crime . . .” The soldier with the mole looked at his friend. “Hard to say. Treason, probably.”

  Ewen wrote the crime in the book, and the soldiers left the dungeon, cheerful now, their work done. The soldiers had said that the ghost-woman was blind, but Ewen quickly discovered that wasn’t so. When he moved, she turned her head and her blue-pink eyes followed him across the dungeon. When he looked up, he found her gaze pinned on him, a horrible smile stretching her mouth. Ewen usually brought his prisoners their food in their cells, for he was too big to be physically overpowered by an unarmed man. But now he was glad of the little door on the front of the cell that allowed him to slide the woman’s food trays through. He wanted the comfort of bars between them. Cell Two was the best cell for dangerous prisoners, since it faced directly into Ewen’s small living quarters; he was a light sleeper. But now, when it came time for bed, he found that he could not sleep with that awful gaze upon him, and he finally moved his cot into the corner so that the doorway blocked the view. Still, he could sense the woman, sleepless and malevolent, even in the dark, and for the past few days his sleep had been uneasy, frequently broken.

  Tonight, after Ewen had finished his dinner and inspected the empty cells for rats or rot (there was neither; he cleaned his cellblock thoroughly every other day), he settled down with his pictures. He tried constantly to paint the things he saw, but he always failed. It seemed like an easy business, with the right paper and some good paints and brushes—Da had given him these for his last birthday—but the images always escaped somewhere between his thoughts and the paper. Ewen couldn’t see why it had to be that way, but it was. He was trying to paint Javel, the prisoner in Cell Three, when the door at the top of the steps crashed open.