Singer's Reward

by Hausladen, Blake;

  The light flared again and a blazing figure drifted straight up through the fog and above the trees. Dia stumbled up the trail, her skin shining as bright as the furious spirit. She reached out toward us and then fell next to my mother. The glow upon her was slow to fade.

  “They’re here,” Pikailia said and looked from our held hands to her bow.

  “Tear your trousers,” I said. “Hurry.”

  They ripped them open, and I took hold of the backs of their legs. Pikailia got her bow aimed at the noise. Earinne managed the same, but continued to struggle.

  The first beast was a savaged deer. Its chest was torn open and its eyes blazing in the blue glow. Earinne’s arrow hit it dead center and it tumbled to a halt. As it stood, Pikailia’s arrow struck it through the head and it collapsed.

  Earinne stumbled, and Pikailia asked, “Are you good?”

  “It is too hard to shoot and hold back the touch at the same time. I can’t do both.”

  The blazing ghost screamed and Dia thrashed. The sound stabbed me, and the blue fog pressed closer and began to waft above us.

  The other two beasts crashed through the trees.

  “Oh, gods,” Earinne cried.

  I felt the cold and despair then as she struggled to keep away their touch. They had been human once, but their torsos and arms were covered in deer or caribou hide and horns, and they had hooves instead of hands and feet.

  Pikailia’s first shot smashed through the head of the first. Her second missed as her target lurched half walking, half galloping toward us. Arrow after arrow missed until one struck it hard on the hip, smashing through bone. It spun and crumbled. Her next arrow staked its head to the ground. She began to tremble. Dia and Liv began to shine bright blue. Ghemma and the runner seemed unaffected.

  “Do either of you have children?” I asked, and knew the answers before they said no.

  I closed my eyes to find the nine beasts coming in, and gasped at the blazing connections that were forming between the ghost and the mothers lying near the stone and along the trail.

  A black mass moved through the blazing pattern. More were close behind.

  “There,” I shouted and opened my eyes to see a grotesque wolf. It stopped as I yelled, and Pikailia’s arrow caught its left should and stabbed back through its chest and out the far side. It fell dead and another leapt over it and straight for us up the trail.

  “You don’t have to hit them in the head, “Earinne screamed as the dark touch slammed hard upon us.

  Pikailia began to move like a loom, mechanical and perfect. Arrows leapt from her bow and one beast after another was struck hard and did not rise. One, two, three, four, five, and then they were upon us. The runner’s face was crushed in a savage jaw. Her next arrow stuck the next through the eyes and then it was too late. A wolf smashed into Pikailia and another bit into my mother’s shoulder.

  “Get the fuck away from her,” I screamed as it tore into her flesh. I snapped my eyes closed and struck out at all the dark things. “Burn!”

  Heat and black ash blasted me and I landed on my back, unable to breath.

  The forest fell silent.

  I sipped hot air while thick ash drifted beneath the bright green leaves and the black sky above.

  Had I killed them all?

  The blizzard of ash tumbled on and on. I counted the flecks and wondered if I still knew how to cry. I could not bring myself to close my eyes.

  The blue glow that dazzled the trees began to die away and disappear into the starless sky.

  I should stand. I should move. I should close my eyes and learn if I killed them all.

  A yellow glow leapt at me, followed by a bloody hand that snatched the front of my dress. Fleur’s face was suddenly before mine, torn from ear to chin. Her mouth was moving—screaming. She hefted me up, and I was dizzied by the sudden motion. Other lanterns were there, and some of our people. Someone had their hand pressed down on Liv’s torn shoulder. A splattering of blue light licked her torn flesh before flickering out. Someone else tied the wound with a length of soot-smeared linen. Fleur took hold of my face. Her mouth moving but I heard nothing. I batted at my ears. They were wet, and I found blood in my hands.

  She stopped talking, took a step back, and pointed slowly around us.

  I closed my eyes for her, though I was desperate not to.

  Liv was alive but badly wounded. The Hessier were gone. So many of those with us were gone, too.

  Had I killed them? Whose ash was I covered in?

  But none of this was what Fleur needed to know. Her eyes were hard. I closed mine tight for her a second time and looked out across the hills.

  Beasts moved toward us from all directions. I pointed around us and gathered my hands toward my chest.

  “How many,” she mouthed slow and calm as her wounded face dripped blood upon the trail.

  I held up seven fingers and then made a zero three times.

  Dia scooped me up, and they hurried through the school. I searched for my mother and found her in Ghemma’s arms. Her blood was everywhere, her body limp.

  The calm of the horses kept me from weeping as I blinked to see the circle of beasts going ever closer. Dia hefted me onto our horse, and we raced out onto the road.

  Something was already ahead of us. I pointed at it, shook my hand, and pointed left as I found a clear route south of a pair of tall hills. We started into the trees by lantern light, and I kept us pointed toward the narrowing gap between the beasts.

  I’d killed Pikailia and Earinne.

  The memory opened my eyes to the ash upon me, and I began to weep.

  A bit of blue warmed my eyes-lids. The song was Ghemma’s. She caught up to us, and was managing to sing with riding with my mother in her arms.

  “Get closer,” I shouted, and Dia did her best to get our thundering horses side by side.

  Liv’s eyes came upon as the song washed over her, and she clutched at Ghemma.

  My brief bit of happiness vanished as her song fell, and misery took hold once again.

  The forest and dark shadowed laughed and the vast sky leered. They were not warred with each other. They were playing with us.

  “Where?” Dia shouted.

  I pointed and she urged the horse on.

  78

  Sikhek

  A roar and a breath of air as a song warmed the smeared sky.

  On it rolled—the great utterance I’d once believed to be mine and mine alone. It rose, and with it came freedom.

  But the dust of hollow promises began to sift through the verses. The singer had tired or was too long dead, and the black talons began to creep back across my vision and my liberty.

  Had I missed one of the Cern Stones? The druids had left them everywhere as though they were apple cores tossed for the benefit of future generations. I remembered the sound of a thousand dead voices blasting away at the Shadow as hundreds of Vesteal gave their lives for the Spirit of the Earth. The sound had reached all the way across the oceans to the Kingdoms of the East, and still that performance had not been enough to kill the Earth’s mate. All they’d managed was to wake Her and burn the sky.

  A lonely slice of yellow moon showed me a vast ruin. It had been Alsonbrey, perhaps—its buildings savaged and its people lined up like cattle for slaughter.

  The Hessier beasts that sniffed and chewed upon them teetered back and forth as Geart’s focus remained upon the source of the song. The last fading verse flickered out and rage tore the night. Abominations wrought in darkness charged down the tithe road. Other things took flight.

  Then the talons took me once more.

  79

  Marshal Evand Grano

  The Battle of Bessradi, Day One

  From the top of the clock tower I could see all the men of the Kaaryon’s army that I could trust. The Hemari cavalry filled the pavilion below the tall red-brick timepiece and were ready to move anywhere in the city. The less nimble militias and provincial soldiers manned the high walls that surr
ounded the quarter. On the far side of Tin Bridge, all eight divisions of Hemari and greencoats working to fortify east side of the Copper Quarter. Rahan’s personal guard held the walls of the Iron Arsenal, while Ellyon and a brigade of scouts manned the high walls of Deyalu Island.

  Some still recommended we withdraw to the palace and defend its high walls, but I’d not trap us there. I’d grown up in that cage. No one would every put me back inside.

  Upon the Bessradi River below the dam, Admirals Sewin and Mercanfur had all their many war galleys and tall ships ready to move the divisions anywhere I might need them around the Warrens, the . Sewin also had nine fire ships on station, should a shoreline or bridge need to a bit of warmth.

  Lake Rahan was similarly decorated with the smaller but perhaps more noteworthy ships from Aneth and Yudyith that had chosen to stand their ground with us. Sewin and Mercanfur could not get any of their ships onto the lake without hauling them around one of Rahan’s dams, but it did allowed us a way to move men anywhere upon the shores of the lake. What weight this mobility would carry against a horde of beast Hessier I could not judge, but I counted them all the same.

  The busiest of us, though, were Rahan’s engineers who worked like fiends to rig his spillways and dams to collapse—should we need to loose the lake or river upon our foe.

  The rest of the millions who had fled to Bessradi were on the move north or west and out of harms way. Some had chosen to stay and fight. They armed themselves in the plazas of the Warrens but it would be days before that ragged bunch were fit to fight.

  This left only the Hurdu cavalry, who I placed on the only ground that would satisfy their pride—outside the walls west of the city, on the far side of the Rat River and away from Bessradi’s freed slaves. From there they could swoop like heroes at whatever dangers presented themselves. It was how I’d sold it to them, anyway. They could not be trusted to act on my orders, so I needed them where they could not get in the way.

  Barok, Rahan, and Yarik were with me while I reviewed our plans for the fortification of the Copper Quarter’s long isthmus, which seem the most likely spot for Geart to strike us. It stuck out like into the lake like a fat thumb and was a spot Rahan and Yarik knew well. A long section of the city’s eastern wall there had fallen as the ground softened from the rising lake water and the pair had been trying to defend or attack the spot for two seasons.

  “I sure hope we’re right,” Rahan said.

  “It is where he will attack,” Barok said. “Dia described Geart as coherent, not mindless. He moved to take out Sikhek and then south to reconstituted his forces in Alsonbrey. He did not make the mistake of sending his beast against Alsonelm to have them confounded and washed away by the twisting river. He will head straight at us along the tithe road and cross where the wall has fallen. Any of us would see the spot and do the same. His critters will jam themselves into the trenches and onto the pickets upon the isthmus, while 10,000 longbows fire from the hill atop of the Copper Quarter. If we can keep the divisions in order, we can win this fight and then the next. He has no good way across the river without some magic. If we can counter it the way Dia’s singers did in Verd, we can beat him without having to rush the Song of the Earth.”

  I knew at that moment he would do anything to save his children, and while it might mean the death of us all, I struggled to imagine how the sacrifice of two infants could ever be the right course.

  “And fight them we shall,” I said to him.

  “It will be dark soon,” Yarik said, and I did not miss his meaning. Eight divisions would not move well through the city’s streets in the dark.

  “Send down word for the divisions to make camp for the night,” I said.

  Yarik took the order down to right relay officers, the word went out, and the divisions started toward their well-seated camps atop the Copper Quarter’s wide hill.

  We were reviewing the reports of the scouts that were engaging the fleetest of Geart’s creatures upon the familiar fields of Courfel, when a flash to the south brought every person in the city to a halt. A blue ball grew up out of the hills of the Halberdon and every singer around and below us clasped their ears and screamed.

  “The song, it’s the song,” Yarik yelled, and flinched again and again as if being stabbed.

  “Is that what we were hoping for?” Rahan asked.

  “I’d not considered that they might inspire the ghost to a full performance,” Barok said. “A bit more subterfuge was called for.”

  The ground began to shake, and began to rethink the clock tower as my headquarters as it rocked back and forth.

  “Could this be it?” Rahan asked, “Have we won?”

  The blue ball stopped expanding, and the shaking went away. His question was answered as the song went flat and faded.

  “How are they going to make it out of there?” Barok asked.

  “Eyes here,” I said. “Other tall ships are already waiting to assist them. There is not one thing more we can do to aid them and our forces are now out of position.”

  They continued to stare at the blue ball.

  “Brothers, forget your wives and friends,” I said and rapped my knuckle upon Emilia’s map of Bessradi. They turned and I said, “Geart is going to throw everything at them. His whole force will be dumped south. When he turns toward us, he’ll hit us on the south side of the Copper Quarter instead of the east.”

  They turned and attended the moment without a Yentif quip or complaint.

  “Barok, take word directly to Blathebed. He is to lead the Hemari divisions to the bottom of the Copper Quarter and get busy entrenching the north shore of the Moat River and the streets behind the walls. Move yourself and your greencoats to Tin Bridge and Foxtail Harbor. I need the crossing secured and a safe place for Soma to return to.”

  To Rahan I said. “Get to the tower above the Moat River spillway and confirm that your men can knock it away. Signal when you know that they can and again when they are ready to do so.”

  “We tear it down tonight?”

  “I wanted to save it for when the main body engages, but if Geart’s forward elements rush us, I don’t want the battle moving up the river or into the Copper Quarter during the dark of night after the Whittle returns. Or mission is to keep the city alive for those with magic to retreat to and give them time to sing. Only failing that do we put every body we have into the fight. Go.”

  Rahan did not move and was tapping the map. Barok and I looked at him. I had no time or tolerance for debate.

  “When I cut the spillway, the flow of the water will be strong enough to wash Hessier to the west side of the river. You will want to move more priests to those walls so the militias there are not overwhelmed by the dark touch. And don’t forget the Hurdu. You put them outside the west wall so they would not be underfoot, but if led well, you know they can deliver a charge.”

  “Good luck finding someone capable of that,” Yarik said, and the three of us looked at him.

  He gave us a strange look. “From relay captain to commander of two divisions is one hell of a promotion after only a day in your service.”

  “It was you that commanded the Hurdu on that long chase after me and Sahin through the Halberdon, wasn’t it?” I asked.

  “I hated that swamp,” he said and I laughed with him. He offered me his hand. “I would love to be in the saddle for this fight. I feel small upon my two feet.”

  “I will envy you the ride,” I said and shook his hand.

  Rahan was still tapping on the map, and I was close to commenting on his ability to be infuriating when he said, “And don’t forget the tower homes.”

  “Which?”

  “The stone houses I built around the Warrens that you have been admiring, but may never have looked at too closely. Each is a proper tower with foundations and walls of solid granite. It is also not obvious, even from this vantage, but they are built in three concentric circles, 378 of them all told. Each can hold out on its own and can drop gates between i
tself and its neighbors. The families that built and live in them have trained and provisioned for a siege. You may not have accounted for them in your force planning. They were my contingency in case Yarik managed a crossing. If we have to fall back, there is no place better.”

  “That is one hell of a contingency.”

  Rahan wasn’t done. “If that fails, you can signal to them by crossing one of my pennants with one of white and they set fire to the out ring and withdraw to the next. Cross with blue to strike the second. Crossing with red and will order the freemen to set fire to ever structure in the Warren and withdraw to Central Plaza to make their final stand. And should all that fail us, there are tunnels beneath the tithe tower that run west beyond of the city walls and back east across the river to the Copper Quarter. I have loyal there who know the routes. The password is Kyoden.”

  “It better not come to that,” I said.

  “Anything else up your sleeve?” Barok asked.

  “That was the best I could manage in the time I was allowed.”

  And then he went, Barok and Yarik moving fast behind him.

  I wish that someone else had been there to see us. Then I wished I had thought to say farewell.

  80

  Admiral Soma O’Nropeel

  The Battle of Errera Landing

  The road remained dark as the human screams and animal howls moved closer.

  “I heard a song in close,” Lady Jayme said to me again. “I swear it.”

  I’d swung the barge back onto pier on her word, but our rider were nowhere to be seen.

  “Eyes south,” a yellowcoat called and every ready bow aimed at the tree line beyond the darkened outbuilding. Shapes and sounds rushed at us through the trees.

  “Hold fire,” a voice shouted back before arrows were let fly, and Akal-Fells began to burst through the trees. Many of the horses were empty, but they moved too fast in the darkness for me to recognize the living or learn our casualties.