Chapter 26
A.K.A: Killing
“Saan-Hu!” It was Gastineo, yelling to get her attention.
Saan’s sudden full-body sensitivity was gone. She was still in pain nearly everywhere it felt like, but it was manageable. She looked over at the hermit, who knelt over an unconscious Nes, hunting bow in hand. She tried to speak, but her voice was gone, empty, her throat sore. Had she screamed just now?
“Are you well, staff sergeant?” asked Gastineo.
“Yes. I believe so,” she answered, her voice coming out choked, halting, ruined. With a moment to think about it, she figured out what she just went through. “That was Citizen Vaiss’ Stitch, wasn’t it?”
“Correct,” the hermit told her quickly. “No time to examine that now. Look across the waters, to the vehicle.”
She walked around Milser’s corpse, past the fasshim corpse, then to the shore. When Saan reached the gentle slope that led down to the water of the Hodenaxi tributary, she heard Goner’s gun boom twice, the first times he’d done so in maybe five minutes. No, she remembered, that was wrong; he had fired three times while she scrapped with Red Jacket and Milser, but she forced it deep to the back of her mind, concentrating on the fight. Goner fired again, and Saan looked to the all-terrain.
Captain Hays was not taking cover behind the front passenger side door as he was when she first spotted him and Evara revealed who he was. Saan found him near the vehicle, running down the hillock where it was parked, the shape of the land hiding him from sight when he was halfway down. She jogged up to the shore, then upriver, trying to keep Hays visible. As she passed a few meters in front of Gastineo and Nes’ position near the tree line, she spoke without slowing down.
“Is Nes going to be alright?” she asked.
“Of course,” Gastineo answered with confidence. “Too much from his bank, too much exertion, but not deadly at his and your skill levels if care comes quickly.”
By the end of his words, he had to speak loudly for his voice to reach Saan. In half-a-minute, far longer than she’d normally take to cross the barely forty-meter distance, she was parallel with the all-terrain. She slowed while moving past the hillock where it was parked, going until she saw past the obstructing topography, until she could see across the waters, past the opposite shore, to the grass and trees beyond. The scene playing out across the tributary stopped her dead in her tracks. Evara was fighting the man and woman the young spotter called out earlier, the ones who came with Hays from the forest section across the water. The girl had blood trickling down her nose and the side of her head, some of her wavy dark-brown hair was plastered to her face from sweat, her uniform jacket, normally fitting somewhat tight around her, was open, revealing... knives?
Evara wore a belt diagonally across her chest, hidden previously by her jacket, that featured several loops for small, straight knives with finger holes at one end. Most of the loops on the belt were empty, the knives gone, but the girl had one of those blades in each hand, her middle fingers in the holes. She was backing away from the man and woman now that Hays had come down the hill to join them, though the latter was still far off. The ragged two had spots of blood on them from small cuts through their clothing, and the man was removing a piece of metal that was stuck in his thigh, revealing an identical bloody mark to the others. He pulled out the piece of metal with a start, threw it on the ground evidently annoyed. The piece of metal he tossed away was small, almost completely black, and shaped exactly like what Evara had in each of her hands. Evara was using throwing knives, tools that most people at the Academy would have never seen in their lives, a weapon whose use is not taught there at all.
Saan grunted worriedly when the girl made the briefest eye contact with her from across the water, and then noticed that neither Hays nor the two ragged enemies had guns. Evara moved her head a twitch to her left, and Saan looked in that direction. One of the assault rifles from the ragged ones was on the ground, near the opposite shore to Saan. Another was closer to the trees, and both were destroyed, the barrels broken apart near the middle where pieces of paper were taped on. Goner looks to have shot and destroyed the weapon right where the Stitch slip was located, the same thing Gastineo did earlier to reveal Red Jacket and Milser. Saan looked to the vehicle again, and saw the hint of a broken bullpup rifle, Academy issue, near the tailpipe. No Stitch slip on that one – Hays was meant to be a distraction while the others snuck up, hidden with hypnotism.
Saan put the rest of the scenario together in her head instantly. Evara would have spotted moving shapes in the forest, called them out, and noticed the Stitch. She may or may not have been affected temporarily, but she could easily tell her brother to take care of them. That was the cause of the boy firing so much today for someone so accurate: he wasn’t using a scope for much of the battle so that he wouldn’t accidentally get hypnotized by reading a Stitch. Goner had been firing at them from the high hills he was told to hide in, trying to hit their weapons if and when they peeked out of cover, all with only a little of Evara’s help since she wouldn’t be able to use her digital monocular in daylight mode – again to avoid accidental hypnotism. She could spot the enemies with the device set to heat-vision, but the vapor cones needed to adjust her brother’s shots would have been a mess.
All those handicaps, all those setbacks, and those twins still succeeded. They destroyed the weapons, just the weapons, of their in-cover enemies and brought them out of hiding. Now in the open, Evara was engaged with the two ragged attackers as Hays positioned himself to replace them if they were killed, and Saan was across the water gawking.
Evara backed away from the ragged enemies a little more, getting closer to the trees she must have come out of in the first place, and said something Saan couldn’t hear. A chirping in the staff sergeant’s earpiece that matched when the girl’s mouth opened and closed signaled that she was speaking with her throat mic on. Another chirp hit Saan’s ear, but Evara Stroff’s mouth hadn’t moved, so it must have been Goner. When the broken noise was done in the earpiece, Evara started moving differently, still slowly going backwards, but now a little to her right, Saan’s left. A few small steps later and the girl abruptly darted away, running for the trees, and almost out of Saan’s view thanks to the parking space hillock.
Goner fired. The captain and the other two enemies had run after Evara when she sprinted, and the ragged man took Goner’s high-caliber bullet like a fast-flying hammer, his feet flying out from under him. Blood sprayed from his chest where the bullet entered and his back where it exited. Meanwhile, at the same time, Evara changed direction completely, halting her run with a solidly planted foot, turned, and threw both knives she held at the still falling man, flicking her wrists sharply. One knife went slightly wide, but the other embedded itself into an eyeball. Evara had thrown it without looking, not caring if her brother made a perfect shot or not – the sniper rifle report was her cue to stop running, nothing more. The throw was incredible, signifying that the girl must have been in a rush or far away to not have been able to kill these enemies with a minimum of effort already.
Evara had only two throwing knives left on the belt, removed them, and had once again slowed to a stalking speed, one enemy taken down by the twins’ ruse. If Goner has a solid position, why is he not firing?
“The boy is out of ammunition,” said Gastineo from close behind Saan, creepily guessing at her thoughts again. “I was counting. The girl was used as a distraction, tossing blacksteel from the trees after the boy destroyed the weapons and hypnotic tools. When he changed position, he was closer so he would no longer need a spotter, but sadly was also nearly out of his little pieces of speedy bloodletting.”
Saan turned her head and saw that the hermit was carrying Nes by the shoulder, his bow held in the other hand.
“How do you know all this?” asked Saan, ignoring the fact that she figured out the top half of the same scenario a moment before, still suspicious of the hermit.
“I was not fighting two men while it wa
s happening. Now, young lady, go,” urged Gastineo, “help her. When she is out of knives and the other of bullets, they will not survive.”
Saan glanced to her right, to a section of a large tree that looked to have been downed by a lightning strike somewhere upriver. It had floated down, gotten stuck against the closer shore and a mound of stone and sand that had accumulated in the middle of the shallow tributary. The tree almost covered the whole distance across, and the reason the all-terrain was here was because of that log – it was how they could split up the team to both sides of the river and plan the attack against the fasshim. Hays was almost directly in front of her, so if she hurried to the tree and took it across, she would be close enough to deal with him and then help Evara if needed.
The staff sergeant sheathed her dangerous short sword and almost started to go back to pick up Nes’ gun from where the corporal dropped it. Saan stopped in less than a full step, grimaced, and remembered that Nes had tossed his magazine into the water. Gastineo silently held out his bow, and she took the weapon without thinking, noticing that the cams on the top and bottom were turned down to the second of three stops, meaning she would be able to pull the hunting bow’s string enough to use it in a fight. She couldn’t remove the whole quiver from the hermit’s back without wasting time, so she opted to reach over the hermit’s shoulder and grab three arrows, enough to hold in one hand.
Now armed, Saan ran to the thick broken tree trunk, hopped onto it from the shore, and jogged carefully along its length. She passed the sand mound in the middle of the water that the trunk was stuck on, desperate not to lose her footing on the softened, moist bark, and reached the shattered part of the big dead plant that looked to have taken the lightning strike. Two meters separated the trunk and the opposite shore, but there was no time to wade in shallow water. Saan conjured up all the energy she could and jumped to the other shore, causing her muscles and joints to burn after the exertion she’d already had to endure today.
She landed with a grunt, slippery white-washed pebbles crackling under her feet. Saan scrambled back up from a landing crouch and ran up the shore’s small incline. Hays had seen her out of the corner of his eye, and despite his still fifty meter or so distance from her due to coming closer to Evara, the captain sprinted in Saan’s direction as she got up. She froze, watching him run, her mind accidentally going fully-Saint again. With the world slowed and her mind over-active, she looked at the hypnotized agent coming for her, conjuring up who he used to be before Vaiss.
She remembered Captain Hanyan Hays, one of the “elders” of the DSF at thirty-six years old. His handsome jawline, very short hair, hazel eyes that turned a light gray-brown as he learned more and more from Dastou’s lesson books to become part of the last Saint’s huge entourage. Saan watched as one of Hays’ feet came down to the ground in slow motion, saw his hands and noticed that he wasn’t wearing his wedding ring. He always took it off for missions, kept it in a zippered inside breast pocket of his uniform jacket. He didn’t have it on when she was in charge of him in the Caravan, now that she thought about it. Hays had checked to make sure the band was there by tapping the pocket when they arrived at Blackbrick’s embassy moor. Did he always do that? Like the way she grunted approval or disapproval, or the way Nes was so physically expressive when not dead tired?
Another footfall and the captain was a step closer to Saan in the real world. Oh no, Saan thought, Hays’ wife. He married his long-time girlfriend, Kiralhu, who came from a city-state near Davranis South, a quarry town. Kiralhu was the name of the woman whose husband she was about to kill. One more footfall.
Saan’s brain had been churning as she thought all this, and an arrow had already been nocked by her hands in the space of a short breath. Her instincts kept their hold, and she pulled the tightened, weighted bowstring as far back as she could with one arm hurt. She ran on muscle memory so well at the moment because she had been using a bow since she could stand up, starting from long branches fashioned into a beginner’s tool to the complex, wood and metal compound bows with pulley systems like the one she took from Gastineo. She was more content holding this weapon than any other, and it would take long time to be as comfortable with a gun, any gun, as she was with what she held in her hands now. All this breezed through her like a sudden burst of wind, in the time it took Hays to take two more running steps. She took a fast, deep breath, aimed, exhaled while letting an arrow loose, and her brain almost shut down afterwards.
Captain Hays sidled smoothly and let the arrow pass harmlessly by him, kept rushing while Saan saw the world go red around the edges, then black at the corners, then normal, thank goodness. Saan remembered that his training was, unlike the ragged enemies, real and nearly exactly the same as her own. He wouldn’t lose composure easily, wouldn’t be hit without effort.
She nocked and drew again, this time aiming low, for his leg, leading her target. She loosed and Hays hopped over the arrow as it hit grass and dug into dirt. As Saan had let her grip open up to release the previous arrow, she had moved her hand up to grab the bowstring again, her last arrow in hand. With the casual, confident ease of the experienced, she was drawing a new arrow as the preceding one struck the ground, as Hays was jumping to avoid it.
She knew he’d jump. Captain Hays was hypnotized, his deeper faculties dulled, so he went with something that was a combination of inborn, natural behavior and training rather than drilled-in combat thought. Unfortunately, jumping means you can’t dodge very well.
Saan loosed her drawn arrow, the last one she had, steadily while the captain was still in midair, falling from the zenith of his jump. The arrow pounded into him in the middle of his chest, breaking his sternum, forcing his torso backwards as his limbs went forward. Hays’ head flew back and was the first thing to hit the ground, impacting with such speed and a flat smack against a small stone that if the arrow didn’t kill him the trauma to his skull would. The captain’s head bounced once as the rest of his body came down with meatier thumps.
Saan did not want to look at a former comrade dead by her hands, not yet. Instead, she focused on Evara, looking up to find the girl in a close fight with the ragged woman.
“Staff sergeant!” Gastineo yelled.
Saan turned her head in time to see the hermit’s quiver flying through the air at her. She caught it with one hand, almost dropped it, and slung it across her back swiftly, tightening the strap with a single hand while biting the leather to hold it still. Saan slipped her hand back, into the quiver, grabbed an arrow and waited for an opening while watching Evara fight.
The girl was at the moment taking quick swipes at the remaining ragged woman with the small throwing knives in her hands, the dark metal blades spinning around her fingers effortlessly, sunlight bouncing and blinking off the weapons’ sharpened edges. The woman was a third of a meter taller than the diminutive spotter and deftly avoided a knife-led jab using a quick backwards movement, then lunged forward at the girl, arms first. The woman tackled Evara, falling on top of her and kicking up grass, leaves, and dirt. Evara tried to move her hands to swing the knives again, but the woman held the girl by the arms.
Saan was stalking closer to the sparring pair, ready to aim and loose at a moment’s notice. Evara, ever the spitfire, struggled incessantly, snarled, and kicked up hard with a knee. The blow hit the woman in the ribs, startling her into loosening her grip on the agent’s hands. A second knee-jerk from the girl to the same spot was harder, and the woman was tossed to the side by the intense strike. As the ragged woman bounced off a shoulder and landed face-first to one direction, Evara rolled in the other direction, giving herself space.
The young spotter got on one knee and threw a knife at the woman’s throat just as the ragged enemy tried to push herself back up. The throwing knife bit into the soft spot in the throat above the clavicle notch, digging in all the way to the leather-corded hilt. The woman froze after the knife struck her, a surprised look on her face. This final enemy was dazed and kept trying to get
up, eyes glazing over as blood dribbled thickly down her chest, onto the neckline of a dirt-stained blouse. The woman coughed, spurting blood that stained her lips and chin.
Evara stood up, walked over to the dying woman. The girl took a moment to look at her dying enemy, bent down, and mercilessly snatched the knife out of the woman’s throat. Saan sucked air through her teeth and made note of Evara’s calm demeanor as dark blood spewed out of the neck wound, the girl stepping calmly to the side to avoid the stream, but still getting drops of it on her leather boots. The ragged woman’s eyes rolled back into her head before she fell backwards. The blood flow continued for a few seconds, making a deep red pool on green grass. Evara wiped the knife clean on unstained grass, and put it and her un-thrown knife back onto an empty loop in the belt across her chest.
Saan reached Evara as the girl started looking around for something on the ground. The spotter walked over to one of the other throwing knives she used earlier, picked it up, wiped it clean the same way she did the one from the woman’s throat, and put it on her belt. She finally noticed Saan standing nearby, the compound bow lowered. Evara had actually walked away from the staff sergeant a moment before, blank-faced and paying no attention to her surroundings.
“Ma’am?” Evara uttered. Her tone was flat, unemotional, ready for more death.
“Is that everyone?” asked Saan, inwardly wondering about Evara’s behavior, but not surprised by it.
“Did you see anyone else on the other side of the river?” Evara asked as she walked over to the man she struck in the eye earlier. She crouched, pulled the knife out of the ruined eyeball with an unnecessary angry grunt, wiped it on the man’s clothing, and put it away.
“Two came in from the forest,” Saan finally answered, mesmerized by the girl brutally retrieving her weaponry, “including their leader Milser. But they are done. No one else is near.”
“Good,” said the girl while walking over to the staff sergeant. “Good.”
A rustling in the forest near them made Saan tense up, lifting her bow slightly, preparing the arrow she still held in her hand.
“It’s just Goner,” said Evara. “I can hear his tribute.”
His what? Oh, tribute. As in something he carries at all times in honor of his people, the Xaneefa. Saan’s own clan had no such tradition, but she knew of it. Now that the staff sergeant listened, there was an almost imperceptible metallic ringing alongside the rustling in the trees, and when the wind died down for a second it was hard not to hear. Goner was being reckless, meaning that there really was no one left nearby that was going to try to kill them. Saan looked over at the girl, who was staring down at the ground, hands balled up into tight fists, knuckles getting white.
“Evara. Are you alright?”
The girl took a moment, staying quiet and stone-faced, controlling her breathing. She fixed her hair, moved loose strands from her face that were stuck there with sweat or blood. She looked awful, her clothes stained with grass, dirt, and other people’s blood, ripped in places. Evara shifted her gaze and angry eyes toward where Captain Hays lay face up on grass near the white pebbles of the tributary’s shore, an arrow sticking out of his chest. Saan spotted the thickly-spectacled Gastineo moving across the last meter of the tributary to reach this side, helping a conscious but weak-looking Nes. They both struggled to walk straight in hip-deep water, but the corporal was the worse of the two.
“Who is that?” asked Evara, her voice hard.
“That is Gastineo, and he is with us, an extension of my tribe.” Saan said that a little too quickly, the edge to Evara’s voice lodging a firm vision in her mind of knives in each of Gastineo’s eyes, hurled with blinding speed through the old man’s glasses.
Goner jogged out from the tree line, passed some shrubbery, and then walked the last few strides to Saan. He inclined his head to acknowledge her but said nothing. Saan followed suit, not saying a word. She simply started a walk back to Captain Hays’ body, and heard the twins following behind as quiet as corps... mice. As quiet as mice.
In too long a minute, they reached the body. Saan looked down, and the twins stood to either side of her, Evara near the man’s head, Goner near his feet. The light wind blew onto her the coppery smell of blood that she was ignoring until she knew she was no longer in danger, and her stomach turned. Gastineo was on his way to them, carrying a pale Nes, whose face was the same stone mask as Evara’s, all his sarcasm and humor and mood-lightening gone.
Saan had no idea how to act right now. In private, she was playful, a drinker, and easy-smiler. In public, as an administrator, drill instructor, staff sergeant, she needed to have a solid layer of durability. It wasn’t an act, either; she was as hard as one of Dastou’s alloys and she knew it. She knew what to fear, and when to fear. Being brought up to hunt game for food from a young age taught you control, even if some were better at having it than others.
Gastineo and Nes reached the dead agent’s feet and stood quietly, thank the void, because right now Saan didn’t trust herself to say anything remotely useful. Hays’ hazel-gray eyes were still open, and she used them as a catalyst to try and respect the man by remembering him, a better option than sinking into pointless avoidance.
He was already twenty-seven when recruited into a practically pre-natal Ornadais Academy after surviving alongside his family in Davranis South, a region that exploded with war so fast the Saints couldn’t intervene. Eight-hundred people died, mostly from the massive forest fires started as a foolish tactic, but Hanyan Hays, his mother, and the family dog survived. His sister and newborn baby brother did not. Dastou told Saan that when Hays entered the Academy, they all thought he had a bad attitude from the start. That wasn’t the problem at all; he was just hardened. Having seen far darker things in life than almost anyone else in this world where war was a rarity, he had a difficult time adjusting to a life of training.
It took a couple of years, some close attention from Dastou, and a lot of psychological treatment, but Hays found some happiness, some purpose alongside the other agents. He still wasn’t perfect, and only a few people knew that he still sought help to keep the anger boiling around in him under control, a struggle ever since the “DavSo Fires.” Saan respected him. Almost everyone did, and whatever fools didn’t were usually disliked by most others anyway. At only thirty-five years-old he was a father-figure to many, extended family to a lot of people. In turn, Hays cared for everyone equally and without reservation.
Evara started to sob, choking it back as best she could and partially failing. When Saan looked over at the girl, she found her own vision suddenly indistinct, Evara’s reaction stirring something. Saan wiped at her eyes with her sleeve and hoped to not have to do it again. The young spotter moved around to the other side of Hays’ body, and opened a fabric-and-hook strap on a pocket at her waist, the sound like ripping paper. Inside was a fat bamboo ink pen, on which the girl then slid up a tiny lever that blocked it from leaking when in storage. With the pen ready for use, Evara rolled up the captain’s right sleeve as far as she could, and began writing on his limp forearm. A tear fell from the girl, hit something she already wrote, but the ink didn’t streak. No surprise there, the Xaneefa clan made the best inks in the world. The girl wrote two lines, one below the other, in a language Saan couldn’t read.
“Rest and be free, teacher,” Gastineo read aloud, his voice reverent and calm, preacher-like. “The stars welcome you anew.”
“What?” asked Goner, his incredulity making the words a whisper.
“That is what it says, correct? In the Xaneefa people’s ritual tongue, I believe.”
“How did you know that?” Goner looked at Gastineo for the first time. The boy seemed to want to say more, but one good look at the man’s big body, easily thirty kilos heavier than him and most of that extra weight muscle, Goner he kept it to himself.
“I will explain, I assure you,” Gastineo promised as he adjusted Nes’ own large frame on his shoulder while poking his thick glasses back t
o the bridge of his nose with his other hand, almost to show off that he was as strong as he looked. “Before that, we must bury your friends.”
“We!?” said Evara, popping up after putting away her pen. “How dare you...”
Saan-Hu stopped the girl’s angry words with an upturned palm and a stern look.
“Do not,” commanded Saan in the sternest voice she could manage.
“I will explain,” Gastineo repeated calmly, “but first, your friends.”
“Friends?” asked Nes. “Hays was the only of these bastards we knew.”
Gastineo sighed, lowered his head. “No, he is not.” The hermit said nothing else, and simply jerked his head into the forest, pointing northeast with his eyes.
Something about the way he acted told Saan to go where Gastineo was focusing without complaint. She led the way there, into thicker, more robust forestland, everyone following. The hermit and Nes picked up the rear, getting further behind every few paces. In a handful of minutes, the group reached a series of low hills, or what you’d nickname hills. The rises were barely waist high, rolling along to the north, curving west. It wasn’t much to look at, just a normal part of a big forest valley, a place for kids to clamber around or slide snow plates down in parts of the world where it snowed heavily. At the bottom of the unimportant, featureless, easily ignored hills were two bodies.
Private Nudrenmbe and Private Melk were on the ground, eyes closed and unmoving. They were the others left behind in the Caravan with Hays.
“Fuck,” said Goner through gritted teeth. “Why...?”
“The hypnotism was not working well on them, I think,” Gastineo said, having caught up in the minute that the others stared at the crumpled bodies, each of which had a single bullet wound to the heart ending their short lives. “It is not Citizen Vaiss’ custom to allow any resistance to his skills. These two were more immune and possibly causing trouble.”
Saan got closer to the bodies, examined them. “Nudrenmbe has blood and dirt under her fingernails, Melk doesn’t. But Melk’s jacket is ripped at the forearm. They fought back.” She was surprised at how numb she was at this. She felt awful, disgusted, broken about Hays. This was tragedy on top of that, and somehow she coped. She wouldn’t for long, she knew that. In a few days, she’d be inconsolable if left alone. Crying like she did when banned from returning to Nebasht. Like she did every night after a few days of playing tough at the Academy. Like she did after failing half her classes in the first semester and becoming frightened of expulsion, of being left with nowhere to go.
She glanced behind her, and the twins were keeping a hold on a white-hot fury, she could tell because she’d seen that look in a mirror before. Saan had to cope, because those two still-living privates had work to do, and having them emotionally shattered would serve no one.
“They were killed,” Gastineo continued, “executed, more like, because they could not be fully controlled. Hays was unlucky in a different way, controlled completely.”
The hermit seemed earnest, but no one responded. After another minute of silence, Saan bent over Private Nudrenmbe, picked up the body, slung it – slung her – over her own shoulders in a fireman’s carry. She ignored how the dead weight made her aching body sting and burn and started off toward where they came from. The twins got the hint and went to get Melk. The Stroffs were smaller than Saan, weaker overall, and they carried the boy’s body under his shoulders together, the same way Gastineo was helping Nes.
That is how they walked back. One woman carrying a murdered private; a pair of twins carrying a different murdered private; one old man helping an injured, exhausted corporal. And all headed back to a dead captain. Saan hoped to never, ever return here. When they got back home to the Academy complex, she might burn a hole in the huge world map on one wall of her DSF-provided condominium, right where this valley was situated. This place could go to the black in the sky for all she cared.
~~~~
Blurred Weaponry (Saints of the Void, Book 1) Page 38
