by J. Gibson
That thing, that voice, brought to his mind a quaking swarm like buzzing locusts, its words unintelligible. He grabbed his head, ambled backward, eyes clenched. The dissonance became deafening. Like the dying of a torch, the white world around him blackened. His weight no longer beneath him, he stared up into the stormy sky, seeking in desperation for light. A numbness captured his body from his feet to his head. He could not move.
“Father!” he heard someone say, their appeal muffled, as though filtered through water.
His heavy lids fluttered and the noise consuming him subsided, replaced with a high ringing. A scream came next. Familiar, yet beyond recognition.
Above him slid a figure, guised in shadow at first. As it came into focus, he saw it. Black of hair and horned. Grey of skin with empty eyes. A woman. A creature. The corners of her mouth curled up, revealing rows of jagged teeth. She fell closer, as if drifting through the air with the snow. The voice in his thoughts cleared as the space between them narrowed; penetrating, invading, forcing him outward, hissing in a thousand tongues at once.
Vor . . . Kaal.
CHAPTER III: RED
Athenne
That morning, Athenne rode with Uldyr, the meeting of the previous night in her head. The details of the Saints’ machinations would keep with her until the day of execution. Their plan, Aitrix had proclaimed, would permit every woman, man, and child to shake off the bonds of Matrian control. Athenne believed that Aitrix had meant what she said, and that she cared about the freedom of magic. After all, it benefits her directly.
Despite Aitrix’s self-assuredness and magnetism, a sort of affable authority, these low schemes rose to odds with Athenne’s heart. Outside, she seemed well. Inside, she blackened with grief.
The forest sprawled at each side of the road. Ash and holly dominated its canopy. Light descended through openings in limbs and branches and washed over a sloping, slanting range of shrubs, herbs, and saplings. Curving creepers hung from every tree, and coiling, climbing plants grasped at their bases. An array of flowers clung to any space they found, brightening the russet lower level.
Wild sounds breathed life into the woodlands; prowling and foraging animals, singing birds, larger creatures in the distance. She longed for an existence of such simplicity, a life that had once been hers.
Her horse whickered, and Athenne settled her with a touch. Shah was dependable, sturdy, the right size for Athenne to ride comfortably. During her travels, Athenne had acquired Shah from a grazier more in need of coin than another animal to feed. A sickness has her, the woman had said, smoothing Shah’s white blaze with her palm.
Athenne had spent months nursing her back to health, taking her out for light runs and brushing her grey coat until it shone again. They cantered through the woods, down mountain paths, across cool, rushing streams. When Shah regained her size and strength, they had bounded even fallen trees with ease.
Uldyr’s steed, Athos, had a black coat, interspersed with white hairs that gave him a blue tinge. Broad at the shoulders and hips, he moved with strength and power, similar to his rider. Uldyr claimed Athos prone to biting, but Athenne had never witnessed that tendency herself.
At last, they arrived at Uldyr’s house, still south of the village of Ghora, near the border between the Sacred Empire and the kingdom of Beihan further south. A mesh of grey plaster and stone occupied the spaces between an exterior frame of painted timber bands and beams. Crossed with iron bars, a window and wooden door adorned its front. Cherry tomatoes, onions, and other mixed crops claimed a garden at its side. The average commoner’s hovel paled in comparison.
Athenne stopped at the fore, inspecting the construction. “How did you come about this place?”
“Built it myself,” Uldyr told her with a playful pointedness, as if the answer should have been obvious. He dismounted and tied Athos’s reins in a loose hitch around a post at the house’s corner. “You can tether yours here.” He gestured to a pole next to the one he had used.
“Where’d you get the materials?”
“Took from the hills and the gorge to the east.”
She followed him as he opened the door and stepped inside. “How long did it take?” At one end of the interior, a living chamber, sat a dining table covered in candles and jars of grains, oils, dried fruits, and meats, pickled in a brine and pink with blood. On the other side of the room stood a writing desk with two chairs. His bed resided in the attached quarter straight ahead.
“Two ages. Lived northeast in the Fausse Woods in the meantime. This far out, no one notices.”
She eased into a chair at his writing table, sore from riding. “Impressive dedication.”
He raised his hands, as if to say, of course.
They talked for a while of things they had not discussed in all their months, when they had lived so long in the moment, and for the next. Uldyr spoke of his life before the Saints. He talked of working on the ocean, fishing for crab in the cold Sea of Nimphre to the south, past the sweeping forests and Beihan.
“I injured a man in the throes of a tempest,” he had said, with the tone of a confession.
“An accident?”
“Aye.” He rubbed his mouth. “I soon became an outcast among the crew.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Uldyr.”
“Nay, it was right,” he said. “Not long after the exclusion, my employ on that ship ended.”
She did not press for details, and Uldyr did not offer many more, except that he could not look the man in the face when he returned from the sick berth the next day.
“For a time, I worked any job I found. I considered taking up with the Black Feathers or Forgebrand. I labored for graziers and farmers, tending their livestock and crops.” He paused for a sip of his toxic homebrew, as if to wash the memory from his mouth. “I hated myself and the reality I’d made.”
“That’s when you joined the Saints?”
“Aitrix Kravae, for all her faults, saved my life. She lifted me from despair, delivered me to my courage. I’m the man I am this day because she found me.”
Athenne’s eyes lowered to the floor.
“I know you don’t agree with all that we bring,” he said. “But what we do, it’s for the good.”
She looked at him and nodded in hopes of moving on.
As their drink set in, Uldyr talked of a love he once held.
“She was seventeen-yeared in those days. I was eighteen.” He described her as a woman of enveloping handsomeness and razor wit. “She had a scourging mouth,” he had regaled, but one he’d let lambaste him again with gladness. Never cruel, her face always alit with joy. “If ever Gohheia had a daughter,” he added, “it was she.”
For the first time, tears welled in his eyes, abrupt and unwelcome. He shifted subjects to shoo them away, and asked her about herself.
Athenne spoke of her study of materialism, theology, combat philosophy, her girlhood in Reneris, at the northeast corner of the continent. The magnificent capital, Renbourg, initially, and later, the subdued Orilon to its west. There, after her mother had passed, Athenne came into her womanhood, and she and Uldyr met, by chance or fate of fortune.
“I ran, jumped, played, traversed valley, stream, and crevice, freed myself in the world,” she said. “I spent days and nights in the southwest Hinterlands, blinded by sunlight as it beamed against frosted winter fields.” She laughed through her nose. “The woods were old, inviting, untouched, humble, radiant. Birch and larch and breeds I couldn’t name conquered the overhangs. Branches groaned against shafts of dripping ice.”
Uldyr’s mouth curled up at the left corner. “You’ve a bard’s recollection, Athenne.”
“I kept rabbits for a time,” she continued, “until a wild dog ate their feet through their cage. I had it suspended over wooden horses to put them at shoulder level. I spent three hours sharpening a stick with my mother’s whittling knife, intent on hunting the beast down and having my revenge. My war march commenced, and mother stopped me.”<
br />
“‘Only you would sharpen a stick to kill the thing instead of using the knife,’ she chided. ‘Now my blade is dull.’” Athenne’s eyes watered at the thought of her mother’s voice. “That evening, we buried my rabbits together. Mother gave them a candlelight vigil and told me they’d returned to the Overrealm to rest with Gohheia.” She waved her fingers in the air. “It makes little sense in a scriptural context, but it helped assuage my woes.”
As Uldyr listened, expression attentive, Athenne had lost herself in delineating the calm comforts of dreams from ages long past, notwithstanding the harrowing happenings of her hares.
A loud bang came at the window.
Her heart leapt into her mouth and tore her back to the present. “What was that?” she said.
Uldyr ran his fingers through his whiskers and scratched his chin. “The wind.”
Then came another thump, sharp and deliberate, enough to rattle the wall this time.
Uldyr jumped from his chair, leather-gloved fingers at the grip of his sword, still strapped to his waist. He threw open the door and went outside. Athenne trailed and brought the door flush behind them. The day had warmed from the night, and the trees cast timid shadows. Their horses were aflutter; shying, whinnying, querulous.
A man stood in the middle of the yard, before the woods of hazel, crystalline lake at his rear, amidst the flowing sward, waving emerald in the wind. He had an angled and slim face, with a thin, straight nose and smooth, unflared nostrils. A smile strung across his jaw like a strand of pearls.
“Are you Uldyr Friala?”
“Who calls?” Uldyr answered, gravel in his throat. He turned to Athenne. “Stay back.”
She stepped toward the wall of the house.
Uldyr’s attention reverted to their guest.
“Aliester Haldis, the Red.” The man unsheathed his blades, attached to his wrists by martingales, in a same-side draw. First came a rapier, then a schiavona, the latter the more substantial of the two, a blade with a superior edge. “Supreme sword this far south of the Golden Sands.” He appeared to size Uldyr up. “You fit, all right. I worried I might be after the wrong person.”
Uldyr towered over the man who called himself the Red. Through layers of cloth and armor, his size laid bare. The self-professed mercenary wore fine linens of garnet, a slashed jerkin in black with sable trim, and a baldric and belt, hardly defensive at all, sacrificing protection for speed and agility.
Before Uldyr had time to react, the man had driven toward him at a run, unusually swift, closing the distance of three or so meters. Shifting on his feet, Uldyr turned to draw, but too late. A blade lashed out for his face.
Nearly divorced an ear or cheek, or both, Uldyr’s front foot followed his back foot in reverse, features tilting to the left, placing distance between them.
The man brought both weapons to a guard, shoulders squared, arms raised, then parting. He seemed to be waiting for Uldyr to respond. “I haven’t all day,” he said with an unconcerned musicality. “Come now.”
Athenne recognized the daggerhand’s style; an Abbisan dancer. She had studied the form and its techniques in her lessons on combat philosophy, more theoretical than practical.
They reengaged, their struggle almost a blur. The man swiveled as they met in a sword bind and caught Uldyr across the chin with a blow of his hilt. Uldyr’s head snapped back. He stumbled to the right, nearly lost hold of his blade, recovered, and retreated. Thin silver lashed out for Uldyr in furious thrusts. Uldyr caught the swords with his own and forced them off, then swiped at the mercenary’s neck and missed.
Moving lighter on his feet, the daggerhand made six strokes for every three of Uldyr’s. Even so, with another advance, Uldyr almost clipped the man across the throat again.
The mercenary backed off.
Uldyr’s stupor encumbers him.
Athenne had read of many battles in her youth. She had witnessed a number of sparring matches, some with wooden training swords, others with sticks or edgeless blades. This bout surpassed those displays. Here, two men, strangers, gave their greatest effort to kill one another.
In the frenzy, steel rang against steel and the pair dodged, parried, and lunged. They were more skilled than the individuals she had watched play at fighting. The man fought with elegance and aggression. Uldyr’s advances were brutish and forceful, yet not without refinement.
The one who called himself the Red looked increasingly eager to finish the duel, and confident that he could. They separated and converged, growled and sweltered in exertion. Uldyr nearly gashed the daggerhand across the face with the tip of his sword. A few close-misses later, one found first blood. The quicker of the two.
Uldyr groaned.
The man’s lips curdled into a smile as the length of his schiavona penetrated Uldyr’s armor and bit flesh. His rapier came thereafter, but Uldyr grabbed it with his gloved right hand at the half-sword and trapped the blade.
With the mercenary’s apparent strong side occupied and his other immobile, Uldyr pivoted. His own left arm jolted down and back, his edge aimed at the extended forearm that had shot out to pierce him, perhaps overextended with zeal and hung up in his padded jacket and tunic.
The man released his schiavona with a curse, and Uldyr lost hold of the rapier. Attached to the mercenary’s wrist, the Abbisan blade swung in suspension. As agony blossomed in his fresh wound, the daggerhand staggered with a hint of urgency to distance himself. His face betrayed surprise, as though he had underestimated his opponent.
“That your best?” Uldyr’s words filtered through taut lips. “Dual-wielding longer swords.” His left side dripped with blood, coating his trousers and gambeson. He looked to Athenne.
Their eyes met and parted.
Awarding his assailant little time to recover, Uldyr refocused and charged. He rained cuts overhand, his left foot powering forward. His sword came down in repeated strikes, in the spirit of a war hammer, making use of his superior stature and strength. Some blows were steady, others were faint and poorly directed.
Uldyr’s injury hampered his ability to fight, but fitness maintained him, encouraged his assault.
The man retreated further. Uldyr’s sword had destroyed the tendon in his arm and grated into bone. White and pink dotted the bloody crevice, and grey skin stretched in ribbons at its edges, the loose, pulled flesh of shredded meat. The mercenary met Uldyr’s force with impressive guile for his wounded state, deflecting the commanding energy driven against him, and managed to set more space between them.
“You’re more than I thought,” the man jibed through tortured breaths as he jerked his mangled arm with a grimace, the schiavona trailing by its martingale, which he finally severed. His jaw tightened and bulged.
Uldyr’s advance halted, head tilted forth the slightest. He winced at the laceration in his ribs. His left hand held his blade before him, tip pointed upward, guarding the shoulder of his sword arm.
Uldyr must end this soon. His strength will not hold.
As if reading Uldyr’s state, and acknowledging his own, the daggerhand waited. His right arm had suffered considerable damage, and his formerly smug countenance wore a scowl of haggard frustration, his eyes as wounds beneath his creased brow, wild with a quiet rage. The rapier he wielded remained to guard, its end weaving slight spirals in the air. He spoke once more, his words grated from between clenched teeth. “It’s your move.” Even with his disadvantage, the daggerhand’s bravado lingered. “Should I cut you up more?”
Uldyr chuckled and wiped the flat of his edge across the front of his gambeson. “You’re down an arm. I don’t need my side to kill you.” His face hardened, eyes flared and blazing. “Tell me, what’s your purpose here?” Uldyr appeared weaker by the second as shades of scarlet and carmine washed his side. “Why have you come for us?” Even the sturdiest man could withstand but so much.
“For you”—the mercenary pointed his rapier at Athenne—“not her.” Blood from his arm muddied the soil at his feet
in copper and brown. His body wavered. They each did. She hoped Uldyr would not be the first to falter.
I have to act.
“Enough.” She interposed herself between them.
“Athenne,” Uldyr objected.
She ignored Uldyr’s dissent. “I am a materialist. As you are, I could incant before you’d reach me.” Her brow furrowed. “Relent or perish. The choice is yours.”
The man’s rapier endured in the air. His thin lips bent into a wan grin. From the wearied expression in his eyes, he did not seem likely to test her bluff. What she said could be true, by the All-Mother’s grace. If he advances, the Mother will protect us. She had to believe it, to garner the favor to cast.
A flicker crossed the daggerhand’s face, as if by the light of a flame in his head. “Nay,” he started, “you’ll incant nothing.” He approached, dragging the tip of his blade through the soil, drawing a line. “Have you forgotten, Renerin?” His tongue clicked against his teeth. “All magic is restricted—offensive, defensive, healing. Even this far from Aros, it’d be by the grace of the gods if you mustered a spark.” He raised his rapier. “You were not my intended, but I’ll cut you down the same.”
Before she could retort, or the man could take another step or spew another threat, he let out a cry and lurched backward. His rapier fell to a swing and jerked as his hand clutched his neck, eyes wide. From his throat sprang a throwing knife, and around it rushed a fountain. He collapsed, face to the sky.
Uldyr had unleashed the blade, hidden in his wears.
Athenne turned toward him, stunned but relieved.
“I grew fatigued of the bard’s melody,” he jested with a grey smile. His incorrigible resilience, free of its need, escaped and let him fall to one knee.
“Uldyr!” Athenne rushed to his side, tearing fabric from her robes and applying pressure to his wound. The cloth soaked through. She placed her other palm at his face. Fever lit his skin. “We must get you inside.”
He shook his head, glowering, as if that simple motion injured him. “Check his belongings. This was no random attack, not this far south, not that skilled a fighter. Someone’s out for me.”
