Smoke in the Glass

by Chris Humphreys

  The shield of the man he’d already killed was on the ground. Snatching it up, thrusting his arm through its hide grip, Ferros bent to the boy and girl. ‘Wait … wait.’

  An arrow, driven from short range into one of the raiders’ shields, knocked the man holding it a half-step back. ‘Now!’

  They burst out, the boy stumbling, the girl fast. Ferros grasped the sword grip in his shield hand, used his freed one to grab the boy’s arm and propel him forward. They were three paces past the fire when the shouts came. ‘Faster,’ Ferros cried, shoving the boy after his sister, turning in the same moment to thrust the shield out. An arrow thumped into it. Immediately he turned and ran again. When he reached the bush that resembled the crouching leopard, he grabbed both of the children and dropped with them to the ground. As they hit it, he heard a shriek from behind him, did not turn to look, did not need to. Good shooting, brother, he thought, rising, dragging the children up, running. Another half-dozen paces and instinct made him turn again, shield braced. Another arrow hit it, and he let the force turn him to run once more.

  He caught up with the children at the rise where they’d studied the camp. The children slid over it. He made a tally of the enemy: one dead at the camp, one dying on the path, three following. Three to kill. Odds nearly even. Smiling he stepped over the lip, dropped sword and shield, reached for his bow.

  Which wasn’t there. Or it was, but not on the ground where he’d left it. He saw it then as it rose, with one of Horned Saipha’s moonbeams glinting on the iron arrowhead, and he realised, in the instant of life left to him, that he’d erred back in the tent. That there had been three warriors sheltering from Ashtan’s arrows, not four. And that the fourth was raising his own bow against him, the string already drawn all the way back.

  As the arrow entered his right eye, his last thought within the shock and the fear was that, after all, it should have been Ashtan who had done the closework, not him. His friend would never have miscounted. And because he had, he had killed them both.

  Some last thought, he thought, as he died.

  Ferros woke, naked, freezing, as the second of the moons, Blue Revlas, she of Night and Morning, was chased from the sky by her would-be ravisher, the sun.

  They had stripped him of his clothes and left him for dead. He understood why when he turned his head and the arrow, which had burst his right eye and gone on through his skull and stuck there, dragged across the earth beneath his head. It was the strangest sensation he’d ever felt, wood grinding on bone, accompanying the strangest sight: the feathers of a shaft the other side of his nose. Though he knew that it was his only wound, a mortal one, it was not the source of the awful pain. The rest of him was. His whole body was burning, inside and out.

  He’d heard about the agonies of this second birth, far exceeding any that could have come at the first. People gossiped about it, speculating, wondering how they would face it if they were chosen. Books were written, of philosophy or tales, plays enacted in theatres exploring the theme. So few were born again, perhaps half a dozen a year it was said, to add to the small pool. Yet those few could come from anywhere, from the fleet or the army, from gutter to palace. In the central city of Corinthium, in one of the smaller cities like Cuerodocia or in his own home town of Balbek. A gift in the blood. It was said that two immortals conjoining had a better chance of having a child who was like them but it was never guaranteed. While the suicide cults that thrived and died out over the centuries were both illegal and unproductive, it was said that of all those who killed themselves in their rites only three had ever joined the immortal ranks.

  It was said, he thought, sitting up, swaying with the rush of blood to the head. Not by him. His parents had certainly not been immortal, dying in the last great plague that had killed one fifth of Balbek when he was five. The army, where orphans were sent, had been his life for the eighteen years since. And there, all speculation was discouraged. Handle what’s in front of you, the drillmasters pounded into every recruit. One life is good enough for a soldier. Seize its every opportunity – for glory, riches, honour. For love, if you can find it. Nothing else matters.

  He had never sought to be immortal. And now he was.

  What would he do? What he always did. Handle what was in front of him – an arrow embedded in his skull. After that? Discover the source of the weeping that was coming from just over the rise.

  He touched the arrow on its feathers, moved it slightly. A shudder of nausea went through him. He was tempted to pull it all the way through but he knew just enough about immortality to know he mustn’t. Pulling any blade from a wound often killed the wounded. Even if he was immortal now, he could still succumb to death as he’d done when he was first shot. Hours more would pass before his immortal body healed itself again. And waking to the agony of rebirth was not something he wished to go through twice. It would also mean he wouldn’t find out who was crying so desperately, and why.

  Careful not to jog the arrow, Ferros raised his head above the lip of the rise.

  They were in a group, the living, the dying and the dead, clustered around a glowing firepit. Two Sarphardi warriors were on their backs, hands crossed over their torn and bloody chests, eyes closed but with open eyes painted on their lids. Sitting beside the corpses were the ones he’d sought to rescue, the boy and the girl. They were the source of the weeping. The three other men, each one clutching a knife or a burning, sharpened stick, were standing before a fourth. He was hanging upside down from a tree branch.

  Ashtan.

  He was alive, barely. The wounds on his body caused by blade or fire, the blood pooling below him, showed that he had no right to be. Ferros could see his torn lips moving in prayer or curse. Curse, knowing him. He could not be far from his end, for even as he watched a warrior, the one with a single eye – Tamin, Ashtan had named him – thrust a flaming stick into the dangling man’s ear. His friend’s eyes went wide, but no sound came other than another muttered curse.

  Tamin threw down the stick as if it was its fault. ‘It is time,’ he growled. ‘We eat his heart and we go. The slave market at Buzuluk starts tonight and if we ride hard we’ll make it. These two will fetch a good price.’

  ‘Better, since you didn’t have time to take your pleasure with her,’ said another.

  ‘More interesting things to do.’ Tamin leaned down to the dangling head. ‘Is that not right? Did we not do interesting things to you, jackal of the Corinthians?’

  Ferros had always known that Ashtan could muster twice as much spit as any man living, and dispose of it more creatively. He did so now, expelling a wad into Tamin’s one good eye.

  ‘Blood of snake!’ Tamin stepped back to the others’ laughter, rubbing his eye furiously. ‘Now I think there is time for one last interesting thing.’ He turned to his men, snarling. ‘You! Cut him down. You! Bring my horse.’

  Ferros heard the words but didn’t see them spoken because he was moving in a crouch along the rise using the protection it offered him. He circled swiftly to the tent. As he suspected, his armour, tunic and weapons were in it. Clothes could wait. He slipped on his two knife sheaths, picked up one of the Sarphardi kite shields, drew his sword and stepped out.

  The man with the horse had just returned, holding the bridle. Tamin and the other man were attaching a rope to Ashtan’s neck. So focused were all three on this task that they didn’t notice Ferros approach, though he made little secret of it. The girl did see him and screamed. He couldn’t blame her. He could imagine what he looked like.

  It was awkward, fighting with the use of only one eye. Perspective was wrong, and he missed blows he should not have, cut parts he’d not been aiming at, was cut on arm and side, not deep. Two of the warriors survived his first assault, and both had managed to get weapons into their hands. But maybe it was the fact that they believed they were fighting a dead man that weakened them. Or maybe immortality compensated for his poor vi
sion. When he’d killed the first man, he took the second’s overhead blow on the top edge of his wooden shield, let the blade bite deep, twisted then wrenched the shield down and to the side, and so pulled the curved sword with it. Then he thrust hard and straight, driving his point through the man’s neck.

  Tamin scythed a blow over his head. Ferros ducked, stepped back. Shrieking, the one-eyed man dropped his sword, turned and flung himself over his horse. ‘Yah!’ he cried, kicking his heels in. The horse, superb as all Sarphardi mounts, went straight into a gallop. But as his opponent mounted, Ferros too had dropped his sword and, even as the man’s heels dug into the horse’s flank, he drew his throwing knife. The horse had gone five paces when the taka took Tamin in the neck. He fell, though his mount kept going.

  Sound, which often went away when he fought, came back to Ferros now – the diminishing fall of hooves on earth, the rising cries of the boy, the weeping of the girl. What concerned him most, though, was the softest sound there – breath on the ragged lips of Ashtan, trying to form words.

  ‘Quiet!’ he snapped at the girl, who obeyed instantly, drawing her brother to her, both staring at him in silent horror. In a gentler voice he said, ‘Fetch me water,’ and as they scrambled up and ran off, he turned back to Ashtan. Holding him, he used his slicing knife to sever the rope at his ankles, lifted him carefully down and laid his friend’s head in his lap. ‘Brother,’ he said, studying the havoc the Sarphardi had wrought, ‘I have to tell you, you do not look well.’

  One of Ashtan’s eyes was caked shut with congealed blood. The other was missing a lid. This eye moved nonetheless, taking Ferros in. A whisper came, though the Corinthian had to bend to hear it. ‘The monkey accuses the man of having a bare arse?’

  Ferros smiled. ‘How badly did they hurt you?’

  ‘Those inepts? Hardly at all.’ A cough came from deep inside him, pink flecked the lips. ‘But they have killed me nonetheless.’ The one-eyed gaze moved over him again. ‘Is this a wound?’

  ‘No. It is a death blow.’

  ‘And yet you live.’

  ‘And yet I live.’

  ‘So. At least one of us will.’ Ashtan shook his head very slightly, winced and wheezed. ‘I think they’ve broken all my ribs. Other things. I am not going to be much help to you, my captain.’ He swallowed. ‘You should leave me. That horse you let go may lead others back.’

  ‘Which is why we leave now. All of us.’

  When he heard the brother and sister’s footfalls, he ripped away one of the dead warriors’ head cloths, tied it swiftly around to cover his nakedness. The girl carried a water skin. But she did not hand it over, just halted, stared … started when he reached and lifted it to squirt some water into Ashtan’s mouth, then some into his own.

  ‘The wagon,’ he said, ‘are the horses near it?’

  It was the boy who spoke. ‘They are in the traces, sir. They were planning on leaving, when they … when they’d finished with …’ His gaze went to Ashtan and he shuddered, turned away.

  ‘Do you know anything of healing, girl?’

  She would not look at him but she did reply. ‘I have completed my first two years with the Healers’ Guild. I hope to be a healer one day.’

  ‘That day is today. Do what you can. There are some unguents and herbs in my saddle rolls, wherever they may be. Cloths too. Battlefield medicine.’

  He rose, took a step towards the wagon, and her voice stopped him. ‘Thank you, sir. For following, for coming back. For—’ She broke off and he turned to look at her. She regarded him directly now, not flinching from his wound. A bold girl, then. ‘Can I … can I try to help you with—’

  She gestured and he lifted his hand, tapped the arrow, felt the shudder through the bones of his skull. ‘This is beyond your two years, young one. If I am to get us back to Balbek, this must stay where it is.’

  He turned, kept going, even when the boy’s voice came. ‘Are you … are you an immortal, sir?’

  ‘I am now,’ he said, walking on. ‘May the gods pity me, but I am.’

  Immortal or not, it was the limit of his strength to get the wagon and its occupants to the city. Ashtan died not far from it, as night fell, Balbek’s lights already standing out against the purple dark of the great sea beyond. The girl could have done nothing more, his wounds too severe and too hidden for even the most experienced of the Guild’s healers. She wept, nonetheless, in great wrenching sobs, and Ferros was too tired to comfort her.

  The gatekeepers, two soldiers he didn’t know, tried not to show their shock, failed, let them through fast, dispatching a third to run a report ahead to the fort. They moved swiftly enough after that. It was reasonable timing, the hour of their arrival. The good citizens of Balbek were largely at home for their supper so the streets were not busy. It was the less good citizens who were about, soldiers off duty, frontiersmen, mariners, miners on leave from the copper workings at Ganhar. These spilled out before tavern or brothel doors and sometimes blocked the way. A whip flicked between the horses’ ears and close to a wine-reddened face moved most. Only once did a man, a barrel-chested docker, hold his place and curse Ferros – until he saw beneath the hood that really covered nothing. ‘Trachamea’s tits, boys, but look what we have here!’ he shouted, and others advanced to gawk and curse in turn. All could recognise a mortal wound when they saw one – an arrow through the head being one of the more obvious that any had ever seen. The resentment that immortality often caused, with immortals occupying almost every position in the highest ranks of army, temple and courts, was usually constrained by manners and the watchful eye of the state. Here, it was unconstrained by liquor.

  ‘By Trachamea’s tiny tits,’ the docker of big chest and limited vocabulary called again, ‘soldier boy’s not so pretty now. Gods, but look at that split apple.’

  Hoots and jeers came fast. Someone seized the horses’ bridles and the twin pair jerked their heads, stamped their feet.

  All I need, thought Ferros, so weary he’d have liked to lie down in the wagon beside Ashtan and sleep. But his duty was to the girl and boy quivering in the back and to his dead comrade lying beside them, to see him properly burned and his ashes scattered to the seven winds before the sun rose and set again. So he one-eyed the biggest man there, that same docker, still cursing and mocking, and considered.

  Though he didn’t blame the man. He remembered joining in muttered conversations in barracks, resentments expressed at an immortal gaining promotion over a mortal better qualified. It had happened to him, twice, only making officer at the third attempt. The orphan son of a blacksmith could expect little else. Now, though, he’d been chosen, by which god he did not know. Mavros of the round shield, he suspected.

  He coiled the whip back. He was good with it, could pluck a sparrow off a gate post. Could pluck out a docker’s eye if he needed, too, even with only one of his own.

  Then he heard it – the rhythmic tread of rivet-studded sandals on cobblestones. Heard next the sergeant’s bellow of ‘Make way, there! Make way!’ A squad twenty-strong rounded the corner, breastplated and helmed, marching in perfect order, shield arms swinging, heavy javelins sloped across their shoulders. The crowd scattered down alleys, into yards. Only the big docker lingered and he but for the moment it took to look again into Ferros’s one eye, make an obscene gesture with thumb and curled finger, then slip through the door beneath the sign of a huge phallus pointing at Trachamea’s tits.

  ‘Sir! We had word of your coming.’

  The sergeant was someone he knew, liked. Megaloumos. The man had fought in twenty campaigns, had seen everything. But even his eyes widened when he saw Ferros’s wound and realised what it meant, though it was the only concession he made to surprise. He swung up onto the wagon seat, took the reins and whip with a curt, ‘Allow me, sir. Yah!’

  As the wagon pulled away, his squad dividing before and after it, the sergeant glanced back
, saw the girl and boy, and the body under its bloody shroud. ‘Ashtan?’ he asked.

  Ferros nodded. ‘Sarphardi raiders. We killed them, freed their prisoners. Ashtan—’

  His name. An arrow through the eye and a life to come completely different than he’d ever imagined for himself. It was suddenly all too much. Tears started to run from the one eye left and he laid his head on Megaloumos’s shoulder with a sigh.

  The sergeant stared straight ahead. ‘Nearly there, sir,’ he said softly. ‘Nearly there.’

  Ferros lay in the darkened room, naked under a thin sheet, his head propped up on a horsehair bolster, listening to the sounds coming through the window – of the fort, and, beyond it, of the port. They’d cleaned him up, tended to all his wounds save the biggest one, though the healer had snipped both feather and metalled tip from the arrow, leaving just a small length of shaft, ends proud each side of his skull which he would return to remove once the draught of poppy had taken a deeper effect. Ferros had been right to guess that its removal would kill him again for a while. Now, of course, he needn’t worry that it would. ‘We’ll keep you asleep for a day and a night. Let the body heal quietly,’ the surgeon had said. But when he’d tried to ask the man how it was possible for anyone, immortal or not, to survive an arrow through the head, the man had muttered about specialised knowledge, made the excuse of patients elsewhere, and left.

  From the first moment when the girl he’d rescued looked at him, to now and this healer, immortality had made everyone uncomfortable, even fearful. He was different now, for ever … for ever? … different. And in that cell, with his mind beginning to fog with the thousand questions he desperately needed answering, he knew only this: that he was the most fearful of all. At that point Ferros would have traded all his future life to be back the previous morning with Ashtan, to have never heard the jackal’s bark, never found the doll, never followed a stolen wagon’s ruts to this fate.