Savage Bounty

by Matt Wallace

  Evie wishes there were ten thousand more of them. She supposes they do too, for much different reasons than winning a single battle.

  She hesitates for only a moment as they approach the Skrain line, focusing on the ex-Savages still fighting so fiercely to break it. Evie is worried the poor, brave souls will be trampled as their own reinforcements crash into the skirmish behind them.

  There is no time and no recourse. The battle will be fought and won or lost right here and now. Any indecision from Evie in this moment would be the greatest betrayal of the people who have already died for her and the rebellion that day.

  Evie urges her mount forward at the beast’s top speed, drawing her sword from its scabbard.

  She glances over at Sirach, whose deeply curved blade is twirling hotly in her hand. “I’ll see you in the Skrain captain’s tent tonight!” Evie shouts at her, hoping she sounds confident.

  “All or nothing!” Sirach yells back at her with a carefree grin before breaking away on her steed.

  Evie faces forward just in time to watch the Skrain shields disappear under the front of her horse. She pulls back on the reins and digs her heels into the beast’s flanks, causing it to leap into the air over the Skrain’s line. As she feels the air rush up around her, Evie swipes her sword against the blur of armor and flesh beneath it.

  Her blade rings against steel, and then she is struggling to stay astride in her saddle among the thick of the enemy.

  The key to handling the chaos of melee battle, she finds, is making your world smaller. Evie sees and hears only what is around her horse. The first Skrain soldier who charges within that sphere meets the tip of her blade with his right eye. The next lets out a howling war bellow as she raises an ax above her head, ready to cut a steak from the flank of Evie’s mount. The Sparrow General silences the woman’s feral cry by ramming her sword down the Skrain soldier’s throat.

  Evie manages to cut down several more from horseback before a searing pain seizes her. She looks down to see the back of her left calf slashed through her boot by the edge of a lance as it pierces her mount’s hindquarters. The horse whinnies in anguish and rears powerfully, throwing Evie clear from the saddle. She manages to hold on to her sword, narrowly avoiding landing atop her head as she hits the ground, instead taking the brunt of the impact between her shoulders.

  The landing jars her all the same, but Evie decides to feel the pain later. She recovers to her knees, taking the tsuka of her curved blade in both hands and slicing clean through the right leg below the knee of the first Skrain that closes within striking distance. Standing, Evie is very nearly bowled back over as the flat of a Skrain shield is thrust into the side of her body.

  Evie stumbles, but she rights herself and replants her feet just in time to raise her sword, blocking the enemy blade held by the soldier with the shield. At the same time, she fumbles to free her ax held in its steel ring from her belt. Evie stops several more ferocious blows of the Skrain soldier’s sword before bringing the handle of the ax to her other hand.

  Her opponent raises their shield as she steps her back foot forward and brings the ax head down against it. The Skrain soldier is unprepared when Evie feints and moves the top of that same shield with the hooked beard of the ax’s blade, yanking it down hard and throwing her opponent off balance. Evie shifts her footing once more to drive the point of her sword up under the soldier’s chin, impaling them through their tongue and the roof of their mouth.

  Evie meets the next foe that seeks her, and then the next, until she couldn’t count the Skrain who have fallen to her sword that day. At some point, she loses her ax after swinging its spike into the groin of a soldier whose body pulls it from her hand as they flail about as if they have been set on fire. She takes up a dropped shield to compensate, but only until the top of it is split down the middle by the blade of a horse-cutting spear. Evie chops the haft of the spear in twain before piercing its owner through their guts.

  She cannot be certain how much time passes before the fighting begins to thin. Evie only knows she is splattered in blood that’s not hers, the leg that was slashed has begun to grow numb, and every muscle in her body is searing as if it is being cooked. She takes no pause until she dispatches yet another enemy and another one doesn’t immediately rush in to replace them.

  Gasping to find her breath, Evie keeps a tight hold on her sword’s tsuka and keeps her body locked in a defensive stance as she peers around her. Bodies are stacked three high in many places, most of them wearing Skrain armor. The line Evie rode against has firmly collapsed, and the majority of those she sees still standing around her belong to the rebellion.

  The Skrain forces have begun to fall back again.

  Have they pushed the Crachian army to the edge of their camp already? Will they really be able to storm into the burning tent city itself?

  Evie cannot fully accept that the much larger army hasn’t already ended her day. She turns back to take a quick tally of the rebellion’s force that remains fighting.

  As Evie holds aloft her blade, a reflection moving through the length of it beneath miniature tableaus of blood catches her eye. Turning, a new darkness consumes her, blotting out the sun. She gazes to her right and left, seeing the same thing occurring across the battlefield. Expansive columns of shadow are drawn among the stained and crushed blades of grass and boot-torn earth.

  Evie’s gaze tracks the source of those shadows, staring up into the afternoon sky.

  The Skrain command, in their panicked desperation and bid to buy more time to field the rest of their forces, have ordered a dozen half-finished siege towers wheeled to the edge of the battle. They are lined in a perfect row, spaced a dozen yards apart, bringing a premature night to the trod-upon grassland around Evie and the others.

  It makes no sense to Evie at first. Siege towers are built to combat high walls, not armies on the field. She sees no catapults or monstrous crossbows attached to the incomplete wooden monoliths, no weaponry to launch at the rebels. A wild thought occurs to her that the Skrain might be sending more archers up through those towers to pick Evie’s people off from above the fighting, but the efficacy of such an endeavor seems small even to her, and there is no doubt they would hit their own soldiers if anyone.

  She sees no archers, or anyone else filling those siege towers. They appear to be totally empty.

  What Evie does see is horse-drawn wagons, dozens of them, tethered to the middle and very tops of the skeletal towers by long, thick braids of rope. The wagons charge hard and fast over the battlefield. The soldiers inside make no move to strike out at the rebels fleeing their path. The only mission of the Skrain in the wagons appears to be to defend the drivers and keep the wheels rolling.

  Evie feels the hot acid of fear rise in her throat before the realization fully hits her.

  By then, the tops of those massive monuments of heavy lumber are already pitching forward.

  Evie turns frantically, yelling at the top of her lungs, “Stop those wagons! Cut the ropes! Cut the ropes!”

  But it’s too late. Most of the wagons have already drawn their tethers taut, and those dozens of building-size wooden stacks are toppling like ancient trees felled by the single swipe of one divine ax blade.

  Those farthest back from the thickest of the fight turn to run away, but the bulk of the rebel force is caught directly beneath the arc of those falling giants, as are many Skrain soldiers.

  Evie flees the shadow of the tower looming above her. She manages to avoid the deafening, earth-shaking crash that comes a moment later, but she is bowled over by the wind and debris the falling siege tower creates as it shatters upon the battlefield. The sound of the ensuing, collective boom is deafening.

  She loses time, aware only of the ringing in her ears and hacking and choking on the dust kicked up by those apocalyptic crashes.

  It feels as though a Skrain soldier just buried an ax in her skull as Evie regains her grasp on the world around her. An eerie silence has overtaken the
field in the wake of the siege towers making landfall, punctuated only by the distinct and anguished scream of someone maimed or dying.

  Her head hasn’t been pierced, she discovers. The pain is welling from within. She sputters and spits as she attempts to clear the suffocating dust from her mouth and nose. That same dust and debris make it difficult to see anything but the sun’s harsh glaring.

  Evie attempts to move, finding it not only impossible, but also painful. She is pinned to the ground by the remnants of a large beam. Evie’s hands are free. She can’t seem to recall what became of her sword, and certainly cannot locate it now. She pushes futilely against the beam, only succeeding in shifting it to further compress her already mashed lungs. There are walls of smashed wood surrounding her on all sides.

  Eventually she gives up.

  It shouldn’t matter, particularly at that moment, but the taste in her mouth is awful. There is a chalky mix of sawdust, dirt, and blood coating her tongue. Despite having sweat away half her weight this afternoon, Evie isn’t even thirsty. She simply wants a slug of water to wash that taste out of her mouth.

  A new shadow falls over her, not nearly the breadth or depth of the ones cast by the towers, but not that far off.

  Evie watches big, strong hands close around the edges of the beam atop her and easily lift it away. The air rushes back in to fill her lungs. She blinks until the ends of messy tendrils of muddy curls and a bulbous sock puppet’s nose stained by bluish-green runes come into focus for her.

  It’s Bam, his hood peeled back and half his face covered in enemy blood and bits of brains mashed by his mallet. He slips those powerful hands beneath her arms and lifts Evie up like a babe, planting her gently on her feet.

  She has to grip his shoulder for several moments before she is certain of her footing, and even then standing feels like being stabbed through both sides by long, serrated blades.

  Evie has never been more grateful to see anyone in her life, however.

  Bam uses a single fingertip practically as thick as her chin to brush away the stained, stray strands of hair from Evie’s muddy and bloodied face.

  She smiles up at him weakly. “I missed you, too,” she says.

  Bam says nothing, but his big, hound dog eyes tell her enough.

  “Lariat?” she asks him. “Diggs?”

  Those eyes droop low, and Bam ominously shakes his head.

  The smile perishes on Evie’s lips. It takes a moment for the implication to completely close in on her. She feels as if another beam has fallen on her chest. But there is no time to mourn now.

  She turns and gazes out over the sudden junkyard. All the bodies strewn over the battlefield are buried beneath several layers of broken wood. All around her, rebels and more than a few Skrain who weren’t crushed by the towers are emerging from the wreckage.

  There is a clambering above them, shifting the debris and raining arm-size splinters at their feet.

  Bam takes up his gore-adorned mallet from where he set it aside, and Evie draws the flared dagger still in its scabbard on her belt.

  They relax as Sirach hunkers down atop another colossal beam overhead, peering down at them with a weary grin. The bridge of her nose has been split open badly, staining her lips and chin. Otherwise she looks no worse for the wear. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but I wanted to make you aware of developments.”

  Evie’s heart feels just a shade lighter seeing her alive, but it doesn’t last.

  Sirach points behind them with the tip of a Skrain sword she has commandeered somewhere along the way.

  Evie turns, and her heart sinks into the acid pool of her stomach.

  A wave of Skrain rises above the wreckage of the siege towers far ahead of them. It is like watching thousands of armored termites crawl through the husk of a gargantuan chewed table leg.

  The enemy soldiers are fresh, unsoiled, and ready to bowl over what remains of the rebels.

  And they are legion.

  Evie sweeps her gaze back and forth across the new line of enemies scrambling over the heap. They continue to grow and sprawl and propagate exponentially. It looks as though the Skrain have finally mustered and fielded the rest of their host, at least what remains of it. And what remains of it appears to be more than enough to annihilate the survivors of their siege tower gambit.

  “I meant ‘all or nothing’ more as a rallying cry, you know,” Sirach says darkly.

  She could order the rebels who are left to fall back, Evie thinks, but fall back to what? They would never make it to the Tenth City before the rest of the Skrain host bore them down. And even if a few of them did survive to flee inside the gates, they would create the same problem they took to the field to avoid.

  There is a short sword hanging from Bam’s belt that he carries as a back-up weapon. Evie reaches out and takes it by the handle, drawing the blade from its scabbard.

  She reaches up to cup Bam’s cheek with the other hand.

  “Are you ready to go home?” she asks him.

  Her devoted bodyguard nods, hefting the haft of his mallet.

  Evie nods in kind, holding his eyes for a moment before looking to Sirach.

  Evie’s gaze asks her the same question she just posed to Bam.

  Sirach offers her a shrug, but her own eyes say far more. There is a sadness and longing and acceptance there that both bolsters Evie and breaks her heart.

  Sirach rises tall and strong from the beam and fixes the sword in her hand, at the ready.

  Satisfied, Evie turns and begins climbing over the collapsed Skrain towers to face their enemy. She finds solid footing atop an only slightly tilted platform that survived the fall.

  All around her, the surviving rebels are finding their feet for one more go.

  Evie looks up at the sun hanging high as the afternoon reaches its peak. At least she won’t die in the shadows.

  “Evie!” Sirach excitedly shouts at her.

  The tone of her voice, so uncustomary in its naked awe, is enough to distract their General from her thoughts of rapidly impending death and defeat.

  Evie looks to Sirach, following her lover’s wide-eyed gaze a mile west, to the ridge of the valley.

  That ridge had been empty when the battle began. As far as Evie knows, their two armies are the only large pockets of humanity to be found for leagues in every direction.

  The ridge is no longer empty.

  There must be thousands of warriors, and there is no mistaking that is what they are, standing shoulder-to-shoulder along the summit. The armor they wear isn’t recognizable to Evie as steel or even leather, but armor it is. Most of them are holding aloft large, machete-like blades that curve forward from the hilt rather than sweep back. She has never seen the shape of weapons like them.

  Hundreds of what look like war chariots line the bottom of the ridge below the main force of the army. The basket of each chariot is fashioned from the hollowed and upended shell of a Rok island turtle like something from a children’s story. It is large enough to fit five standing or three sitting, its exterior as black as volcanic glass. Razor-edged spikes cover the baskets’ exterior.

  Each chariot is lashed to a team of what looks like gargantuan pigs; Evie realizes they are wild boar. Though she’s never seen one, she’s heard stories about them, and knows their tusks are sometimes illegally imported from Rok and sold as trinkets or ground up as aphrodisiacs.

  “Those are Rok Islanders,” Sirach marvels. “I can’t… we’ve made overtures to them for years… so many years… but they’ve never… they wouldn’t…”

  “It doesn’t look like they’re here to sell fish,” Evie says breathlessly, a slow but thundering swell of hope beginning to rise through her chest.

  She almost can’t accept it. It’s like something from a story she would’ve heard as a child, the kind of stories about battles and heroes Crache doesn’t include in any text or teaching about their history, tales only whispered between the old who heard them from their elders, traveling backwards in
time for generations. In those stories, the heroic army would find itself at the brink of defeat by their evil enemies, facing overwhelming odds that were surely impossible to overcome. At the last possible moment, a great cavalry would ride in and aid them, saving the day and winning the battle for the side of right and good.

  Evie can’t believe she is living right now in that moment. She hadn’t even prayed, not to the forbidden gods of the stars, not to any gods. Yet here was an answer to the deepest desire of her heart. It’s salvation. It’s victory for the rebellion of which she has been given charge and a moment ago was certain she’d failed. She was ready to die fighting futilely, but now, blessedly—

  “Um,” Sirach says beside her, the awe gone from her voice, replaced by something dark and deeply concerned. “What are they waiting for?”

  Evie is shaken from her grateful and tear-inducing reverie.

  She blinks, refocusing on the ridge and the army waiting there.

  The army still waiting there.

  The Rok Islanders haven’t charged, and it does not in that moment look as though they are preparing to do so.

  Evie looks away from the ridge, across the wreckage in front of her soldiers. The Skrain are advancing quickly now, massed in rows of bodies that stretch all the way back to their camp. They’re closing the gap between their ant-embossed armor and the surviving rebels.

  Still, thousands of Rok Islanders who are clearly outfitted for battle and far away from their home across the sea, having invaded land upon which they are forbidden to even set foot, are making no move to join the fray.

  Darkness creeps into every corner of Evie’s heart, reaching a shadowy claw up to grip her mind.

  “They aren’t here to help us, are they?” she asks in the voice of some forgotten ghost, not really expecting any answer.

  Shake it off girl, Mother Manai shouts inside her head. You’re the Sparrow General! Lead! Lead until there is no one left to hear your commands! Do it now! They’re coming!