Fired

by Liam Reese

“If you want to raise an army of those who will support your princess,” he had said, “the thing to do is have them meet.”

  “But we don’t know where they are,” she had objected, and he had favored her with a smile that was surprisingly white and clean from behind his beard.

  “You may not,” he said, “but I know everything. No one ever bothers with what the sheep farmer overhears. No one ever takes care to hush when he walks by. Besides which. The blood of the rebels is the blood in my veins, too, no matter whether anyone will admit it or not.”

  And so, they were sending messages.

  Neither of them could write — Ruben could, of course, but he was not consulted — but that was perfectly fine, Berren said, as none of the rebels who would get the messages could read. Instead, he had taken several moments, nearly half an hour really, putting together a few symbols that would lead them to the meeting place.

  “Which ought to be on the way to the castle, if you’re planning on meeting your lady there,” he had said.

  “Outside the castle town, the nearest settlement is Victory’s Blight,” said Lully. “I’m to wait for the Princess Irae just outside of it, in the thickets to the west.”

  Berren nodded and made a few more marks on the paper. Lully stretched upwards to look over his shoulder and saw that he had drawn a very crude rendering of the castle — a few blocks on top of each other, really, with a pennant flying from the top — and an arrow pointed to the left, on the other side of which was a little jumble of houses, and a few scrawled X shapes next to it, all circled around with dotted lines. Above it all, on each one, he drew something circular and jagged, which at first, she thought was the sun, and meant to ask about it; but then she realized it was the crown, and kept her mouth shut.

  “It isn’t much of a message,” said Berren, apologetically.

  “Will they understand it?”

  “I reckon that they will.”

  “Then that’s all that matters.”

  The pieces of paper were small, ripped into even tinier shreds as he mentally counted up how many families needed to be notified. She helped him with that part, tearing the thick nap carefully, and twisting the finished messages up in little screws of paper that wouldn’t attract much notice. When he had finished the last, he tucked them all together in his satchel and reached for his hat.

  She clutched at his arm on a whim.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  He smiled at her and reminded her, gently, “I am not doing this for you.”

  He left them alone in his little shed, alone apart from each other and his sheep. It was sparsely furnished, with only a narrow bench with a blanket on it on which he normally slept, and the rest of it was open for the sheep to huddle closely together in the chill of the autumn evening. With the amount of close-packed little furry bodies and the smell of wet wool, Lully had to fight to stay awake. Finally, having nearly fallen over onto Ruben several times — he sat next to her on one side of the bench, and Graic sat on the other — she shook her head vigorously.

  “Why not sleep for a while?” advised Ruben. “I’ll alert you as soon as he returns. But he had some ways to go, so it may not be till morning.”

  “No, no,” said Lully, “I am perfectly all right, and I’ve never been more awake in my life.”

  Then she was opening her eyes to the opening of the door, and Ruben was curled up on the floor snorting in his sleep, Graic had her head back and her mouth yawned open in a snore as well, and Berren was smiling that curiously clean smile at her, hat in hand, hair tumbled by the wind.

  “I’m sorry it took all night,” he said, hanging his hat on the hook on the wall. “I hope you didn’t all starve to death.”

  “No, we brought food with us, of course,” said Lully.

  “Good,” said Berren, “then you can share some of it with me, while I tell you what befell me on my journey.”

  He had borrowed a horse, he told them — a more or less useless horse, but a horse nonetheless — and that was the only way in which he was able to achieve his aim of alerting the remaining rebels from the little town.

  “They’ve scattered far and wide,” he said, chewing animatedly at the bread Lully had handed him, “or at least, it seems like far and wide to me. I don’t much leave the village, of course. A distance of a few miles feels like a lifetime. They’re in the woods, in the little hamlets, in disguise, incognito, no one knows them, and they know no one. But I know them, whether they want to admit to knowing me or not.” He shook his head like a wet dog and his hair flew every which way.

  “Did they take the message?” asked Lully, half breathless with it all.

  He peered at her from underneath his hair, which had fallen into his eyes.

  “Each and every one of them,” he said. “No one turned me down.”

  She sat up straight and had to restrain herself from clapping her hands, though her feet drummed briefly on the floor beneath the bench before she could stop them.

  “Look at you,” said Berren, smiling at her, “anyone would think I’d told you I’d bought you the moon for your birthday. Look at your eyes sparkle.”

  “Never mind that,” said Lully, though she was practically giddy and didn’t, in fact, mind that, very much. “I only want to know if they will come, if they will rally to their queen once more.”

  “The only way to know that for certain is to go there ourselves,” said Berren. Lully tapped her feet again.

  “And when will we do that?”

  “Right after I finish my dinner.” He lifted his bread to demonstrate. “And put the sheep out to pasture, of course.”

  She hesitated for a moment; the first thing she had the urge to do was to snatch his bread and demand that he eat as they moved. But he had been terribly kind to them — unexpectedly, unreasonably kind, really, considering he didn’t know them from any other stranger — well, apart from Graic — and also. he was much bigger than she was, and his shoulders were wide, and his mouth was stern when it was not smiling. She thought better of it and went instead to the door to open it.

  “Come on, sheep!” she cried. “Out with you!”

  She set to trying to make them move, making shooing motions with both arms spread wide, making clucking noises to try and scare them. The sheep milled around, uncertain, and she swatted a few of them on the rump to try and put the fear of herself into them.

  She thought she may have heard the sound of someone chuckling, or of someone trying to hide the fact that they were chuckling, but when she looked back at Ruben he was only watching her soundlessly, and Berren’s mouth was full of bread.

  Eventually — in rather more time than she had hoped, but rather less than it could have taken — Berren was finished, the sheep were seen to, and Graic had been lifted onto her horse. Berren looked up at her, looked over at Ruben and his horse, and smiled. Perhaps Irae was right and she did need to work on developing patience

  “I don’t have a horse,” he said.

  “What happened to the one you borrowed?” said Ruben, with a perturbed smile.

  “It was borrowed,” said Berren, “and it went back to its owner with a satisfying sense of a

  job well done.” He turned to Lully. “I suppose I could run alongside you, if need be.”

  Lully looked at Graic, looked at Ruben, and frowned.

  “Well, that’s just silly,” she said. “You can ride with me, if you like.”

  “But,” said Ruben.

  “And Ruben can take Graic.”

  “But!” said Ruben, slightly more urgently.

  “Come along, legendarian,” said Lully, “there’s no time to waste, you know.” She clapped

  her hands briskly. “Time and tide, and rebel souls, wait for no man who doesn’t want to get on a horse with an old woman. I can handle your horse just as well as I could handle mine. I suspect you will be able to manage just the same.” She advanced on Ruben’s horse, which was a great deal taller than the one she had been riding all t
his time. Berren helped her up, and his hands did not linger at all. That was much more satisfactory. “I suppose you know the best way to get there, don’t you?”

  “I’ve never been myself,” said Berren, “but I’m told I have an unerring sense of direction.”

  “Good,” said Lully, “now, let’s be off. We’re burning daylight.”

  She nudged the horse into motion, only checking once to ensure that Ruben had at last

  mounted the other horse with Graic and that the two were following closely behind. Ruben did not look happy, but Lully supposed that was only to be expected. Graic was seated behind him, arms around his middle, and she had a curiously strong squeeze for such an old woman.

  “How long till we reach Victory’s Blight?” she asked Berren, turning her head to the side.

  “If we ride swiftly, we should be there tomorrow afternoon.”

  She nodded, facing forwards again, and took a firmer grip on the reins.

  “Then let’s ride swiftly,” she said, and gave the horse another nudge, more firmly this time. Against the wind, exhilarated at finally moving towards their destination, feeling her heart pound against her chest and his arms discreetly, cautiously wrapped around her waist, she shouted, “Thank you, Berren!”

  He leaned forward to speak into her ear.

  “Didn’t do it for you!”

  She made a mental note to ask him later what, exactly, he had done it for. But for now, there was only the wind and the ride.

  They did not stop until that evening, and even then, they rested only for a few hours before getting ready to leave and be on the journey again.

  It was Lully who had made the decision. Ruben, she was quite sure, would have been perfectly fine with sleeping forever; Berren, being older, she suspected of being more tired than he would admit to, and therefore resting would not have gone amiss with him, either. But he had more of a reason than the rest of them, she thought, somewhat indulgently. Besides, he wasn’t born to this fight. Whatever his reasons were for doing this, surely, they were not as deep-seated as those she herself had.

  And as far as Ruben’s reasons for being here, she decided, she was entirely baffled by them.

  She had never seen him so grumpy before. The legendarian was legendary for his incessant smile, which he wore even during the dark times they had gone through on this adventure. But now, repacking bags after their brief rest, taking off feed bags from the horses, re-saddling, preparing for the ride — now, he wore a faint frown even as he went about his business, and she couldn’t quite fathom it.

  “What is it?” she said at last, when she could take it no longer. Berren was occupied with putting out the little fire they had started to warm themselves; Graic was snoring away nearby, leaning against a tree trunk. Ruben looked up at her, brow a little furrowed, and his mouth twitched as though he were trying to smile but couldn’t quite manage it.

  “What is what?”

  “Why so glum?”

  “Oh.” He looked down at his horse’s saddle again. “Do not the circumstances call for glumness? Or glumnity, whichever the word is that should be used? We are in the middle of a journey to put together a rebel army, and I am riding a horse that doesn’t like me and which gives me an itch, with an ancient crone behind me who seems determined to squeeze my guts into a one-inch square. It’s getting on towards the middle of the night, and we are riding through nowhere, following the direction of a bastard sheep farmer who can’t even grow a beard correctly, on our way to join a group of strangers who may or may not be planning to betray us, to fight against a government about which I feel no particular compulsion to do so, using the powers of a cursed outlaw, which may or may not work, depending on the way the wind is blowing, and all of this is certain to end in blood and death.” He paused for a moment, working a strap in through a buckle. “You’re right. Why on earth am I so very glum?”

  Halfway through his laconic tirade, Lully had flushed hotly, her hand stilling on the tack of her own horse, which was difficult enough to handle without the distraction. She looked away from him.

  “Is it really that bad, do you think?” she said. “Do you see doom for us everywhere you turn, legendarian?”

  He dropped his hands away from the horse and took a step toward her.

  “I know how stories like these go,” he said, heavily. “There is so rarely a happy ending for anyone.”

  “Why don’t you go ahead and leave, then?” she asked him, reasonably enough. Though the words were a little bitter on her tongue. She didn’t understand why, and so she decided to ignore it. “You’ve finished what you were hired to do, and you’ve been paid.”

  “Paid indeed.” He scoffed. “Not enough to keep putting my life on the line!”

  “Well, then, all the more reason why you should leave while you’re still able!”

  He sputtered and muttered, a few false starts to sentences, a word here and there, and finally he managed to get out, “Lully.”

  “What is it?”

  “Do you really not know why I don’t want to leave you?”

  She had an inkling, but it was preposterous, so she folded her arms and frowned at him.

  “No,” she said, “I really don’t. Pray tell.”

  “Because,” said Ruben, “I don’t want to leave you.” He twisted his fingers together and looked uncomfortable and awkward. She stared at him. “If this were a story, I’d take you in my arms and kiss you and show you what I mean.”

  “This is no story,” said Lully. “Do not touch me.”

  “I know, I know.” He turned back to his horse, and she turned back to hers. After a moment of silence, he cleared his throat. “You have nothing to say to me about it, I suppose.”

  “Only that you have read too many fairy tales, legendarian.”

  “Yes,” said Ruben, and at the sight of how low he hung his head, her heart pained her, and she opened her mouth to speak — but could not quite bring herself to contradict what she had said. “Yes, of course.”

  She pulled the last strap through its buckle, abruptly, and turned away from him, pulling her horse along with her.

  “We’re burning moonlight,” she said. “Let’s be on our way.”

  Perhaps the ride would clear his head, she thought. Perhaps when they stopped again, at their destination, he would have returned to himself.

  It was a vain hope, of course, but by the point that they reached Victory’s Blight, she was far too distracted to even pay much attention to poor Ruben. They arrived as the light from the evening was dimming in the far east of the sky; the town lights of Victory’s Blight played against the low hanging clouds, showing bruised purple and a sickly yellow. But in the thickets to the west, people had gathered.

  There were not, perhaps, as many as Lully had hoped. And they were, perhaps, less stalwart, less heroic looking, than she expected. But unlike Ruben, she had not been raised on fairy tales and stories; to watch the men and women come out from the thorn trees, to watch them gather in the little meadow in the midst of the brambles, made her heart rise into her throat.

  Some were old, some were young. Some were injured, or maimed, or carried the heartbreak and the horror of murdered hopes in their eyes; all were wary, and weary. They had traveled from far to be here, with the prospect of fighting for their queen. They were loyal. They were exhausted. They were the men and women of the rebel army, here to carry the rebel queen back to her rightful castle, her rightful throne, her rightful place at the head of the kingdom.

  They stood and watched as Berren slid from the horse and helped Lully down after him. He stood at her side, and she caught her breath.

  “They’re all looking at me,” she whispered.

  “They came because you asked them,” whispered Berren back to her. “The princess has not arrived yet — you’re the one in charge, till she does.”

  She shook her head slowly, looking out over the rough men, the few women among them with squared shoulders and lifted chins.

&n
bsp; “What do I say to them?” she said, voice scarcely loud enough to be heard.

  Berren put a hand on her shoulder.

  “A thank you is always a good start,” he said.

  She nodded and moved away from him. She spread her arms, hoping the movement, the gesture, would stir a little more blood into her heart and give her some courage. She opened her mouth to speak, and her voice was too low to be heard. She took a deep breath and tried again.

  “I am here for the same reason you are here,” she said. “The king is an imposter — the rightful heir to the throne needs our support, to take back what belongs to her. I am here for loyalty to the throne, to the royal bloodline, to the November King and the rule he has passed down. I am here to fight against dishonesty, against the imposter’s wicked rule, against the pain and the neglect that he has caused. I am here because I love this kingdom, because of love for my family and my friends, because I want to fight for your future and my own. I am here for my faith.” She stopped and swallowed. “If you are here for the same, then I thank you. The princess Irae is on her way, and I know your presence will prove her faith in her kingdom, in her people. She has never given up on you. I thank God, and I thank you, that you have never given up on her.”

  She lifted a hand, fingers curled around in a fist, and silently, one by one, they did the same, till their hands were all towards the overarching, wheeling sky above, the ancient stars.

  She pulled Berren aside afterward. She was still shaking from her nerves.

  “There are so many here. You didn’t send out this many messages,” she said.

  He inclined his head, acknowledging this to be true.

  She shook her head in wonderment. “Where did they come from?”

  “The news spread, I believe.” He shrugged. “It happens. News tends to do that. Many of those who are loyal to the princess have family members who feel the same way — even those who did not fight in the beginning have come to see how it all plays out. They may not all be as willing to get into a fight as you might like, but they are here, at least, out of loyalty.”

  “It’s amazing,” she said, simply, and she smiled at him with pure joy. “Thank you.”