“It’s your fault. It’s your fault. It’s your…”
Voren scowled behind the tears. Then, in shaking hands, he took the knife and slapped it against his heart. Rurik tensed, feeling the words lost. They had done nothing. This was madness of its purest sort.
“You have never cared, have you?”
The blade dithered, one final time. I’m so sorry, Essa. Then it began to sink.
“Voren.”
The word hung like a curse in the stale air. Gradually, it took shape. Red hair and cap. It took the sound of steel and the crack of a boot. Ash billowed in behind it, spilt from an open doorway. In that portal stood a man and a sword. As one.
Rowan did not say the boy’s name again. Its blood hung in his silence.
The baker spun from his charge, the dagger still in hand. Caught at the act, he became only a boy once more, naked with the fear of death. It seemed sound wished to beckon from his slacking, fumbling lips, but nothing issued. The wild eyes darted, first to Rurik, and away. A step bore him back. And another. Always, his eyes kept coming back to Rowan.
The swordsman’s gaze flicked from him only once. It found pity in the form of Rurik, but Rurik lay still, and could only mumble his pleas. In every breath, death pressed a little more air from his lungs. There was nothing left to give. It hurt too much. He dared not hope.
The eyes, though—they twisted back hot as the dagger point. Then Voren fled.
Bodies propelled across the little space. “How could you?” Rurik craned to see—the blade, the body, the little voice. It screamed out, seemed to run with the shape of blood where Rowan pierced him through the side. Like a piece of cannonball.
Too late, they caught the motion of a fire poker. It cracked Rowan across the head and staggered him to the floor. The sword fell at a clatter, and Voren, howling, plunged into the night.
It took a few moments for Rowan to right himself. Breaths came as fumes as his hand touched his head, and when he pulled it away little red mirrors of himself came with it. Collecting his rapier, he staggered into the doorway, but Rurik already knew the man would find nothing. Voren had gone.
But his anguish—that remained.
At a shamble, Rowan returned to the table and began to cut him loose. Like a mantra, the swordsman kept repeating: “It will be alright.” It seemed more for Rowan’s own self than for him. There were no tears in his eyes, but his friend was pale as a ghost, and his hands quaked where they touched Rurik’s bonds. When Rurik cried out, for the rattle one snapped bond set off, Rowan all but faded away. Only his touch on Rowan’s hand set him moving again.
Rurik wanted to reassure him. To tell him it would be alright. The words wouldn’t come. Fire trickled to a tedious throbbing, and with every bead of sweat he could feel a little more of the heat trickle out of him. Mind wandered lonely and adrift, but Rurik still had the sense of self to try and focus on the pain. To focus on the hurt. The mind begged him stop, but he knew what lay in acceptance. He knew what would happen when he ceased to feel.
Not now. Assal above, not now. He had to tell them. “Voren, he…” But Rowan shushed him, told him to keep still. The mantra broke, and it was Rowan that assured him it would be alright. It could not rest. What if I do not wake? “The whiskey. Rowan. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me.” The hands slid under him and faltered just a little with the words. Please believe me. Don’t make me die a liar. Fingers coiled, heaving him, and he screamed in spite of himself, for Rowan was not large enough of a man to bear him straight, and the wounds curled deeper as he bent.
He thought of Voren Bäcker, of the words the baker had said, and felt them dampen the light of it all. Lies. Truths. So many people, fighting so many unnecessary ills, all because they dreaded the silence.
Who am I? Why do I deserve that beautiful sound?
They were nearly to the door before Rowan replied. “Be still now. I know, little lord. I know.”
No sweeter words could have rang out from the dark. He wanted to thank this man, but he was too tired, the wounds too deep. Strength flooded out, and where the grip faltered, he sank against his friend, letting the words repeat, but in his head it was no longer Rowan he addressed.
In a white field, a little girl waited for him with nothing but the stars as guide. She turned, drawing the years about her like a cloak, and the green fires burned through all the mirrors of herself. No longing, anymore.
A voice called to him. Somewhere, a head rolled across limp shoulders. There was no darkness.
Chapter 19
There was no path but forward. No destination but away.
They saw. They all saw the blood. Through a fop’s hate-filled eyes.
Branches snagged and snapped both cloth and flesh, tearing little corners out of the soul that remained. Trees and more trees. That was all he ever saw. All he ever had a mind to see. Winter had done little to halt the overgrowth and spring had returned it to full bloom. Vines, branches everywhere. Even the sun only slanted in at angles. That did not matter. If he could not see, then they could not see him…right?
There was never consideration that he was not being chased.
He stumbled over a root. He threw up a cry against his fall, but while quick feet saved his pride, the sudden jerk tore at the wound in his side. Its very edges seemed to crackle as he stilled, rasping as he steadied a hand back against the flow.
The whole side of him was dampened, stained. It made his head spin to watch. There would not be water enough in all the world. Dirt was getting in. Dirty-dirt. Shreds of the world. All the while, he kept leaking out.
They can’t see me. They can’t. But it seemed like all the hounds in Hell were nipping at his heels. Every shadow held ghosts of footsteps. Whispers.
They would kill him when they caught him. Oathbreaker. Killer.
No, he could not even do that right. The blade was still clutched claw-like between his fingers. He could not seem to let it fall. It was frozen. Frozen in blood. Cries of pain still rattled in his head. That face, that horrible face—burned forever into the back of his eyes.
He should never have spoken. That was his downfall. Damn my tongue! Luck flees when unlucky men moan. So help him, time had proved that bit too readily true. But you couldn’t kill a man like that without teaching him his sin. Otherwise it was just…just…
Murder.
He wasn’t a murderer. He just wanted them to be free. If he had done it with an army at his back, would they have called him a murderer then? No. Slap armor and a few long guns on them, and they would be naught but heroes. Hypocrisy. That was all the details understood.
And Essa. Oh, Essa. What will you think of me when they lay this at your feet? Were it anyone else, he could deny, deny, deny, but now—not her cousin. Not that brother from another flesh, no, she would never take a kindly word from any over his. This was enough to slow him—that and the lack of breath. Rowan was not a bad man. Would he understand? Couldn’t. Idiot. The blade. The ropes. No one could “understand” that.
The world was spinning out of his grip and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Suddenly, he could not breathe. He came to a halt, gasping for air. The trees rose up around him and the shadows were long, and everywhere there were bugs forming columns, like little soldiers at their wars of infestation, creeping-crawling their way toward him at a whistling tune.
When his hand came away from his side there was so much blood. It wouldn’t wipe away.
Yet the whistling did not go the way of other fancies. It, like the blood, remained even as the bugs dissolved into a prickling sensation along his neck. He swooned and caught a branch with his arm, pulling himself forward bit by bit. Eyes lay in the trunk. They were everywhere, all around.
I’m sorry. He wanted to shout it, but there was no use in it. He did not even know what for—the effort with the knife, the pain he brought to Essa’s feet, or failing. Pride—the soldiers always said it was the sharpest blade.
Something snarled from the dark and yanked him
forcibly from the eyes and whistles of the world. There, before him, was no bug. A dog. Wild thing, surely, bowled over with a layer of fur so thick as to make a shepherd jealous. He took a step back, and it stepped after him, padding one long leg among the needles and bearing its heavy jowls. Foamy breaths dribbled from it, and the growl came again. It possessed him and seized him still. He could not bring himself to cry out. No one would have come to his aid, anyways.
And if this thing rose up on two legs, we might strike ourselves a conversation. Not that the beast looked particularly inviting to that prospect. He might have had better luck with a wolf.
There wasn’t even a rustle to announce the blade that came so effortlessly against his already screaming side. It prompted him to give it voice, but when another tapped against his throat, it trailed into an agonizing murmur. Trapped. He dared not look back, but the sight of the dog lowering itself on its rear legs only drove the frenzy higher. These two Hells—they moved as one. The hound was nothing but the pet. Not so wild, after all.
“Please.” The word had scarcely left his mouth, however, when the dagger tapped his wound flatly and doubled him up.
“Ah, ah,” a dark voice ticked, admonishing him. “If I wanted to kill you, doughboy, I might have shot from afar. You are no deer. But that does not mean I’ll permit sound.”
When Voren nodded—vigorously, at that—the blades slithered away as quickly as they had come, to be replaced by a firm boot to the back that sent him flailing into the forest floor. In a panic, Voren twisted wild, scrambling onto his hands and scooting back as many feet as the shadow-man seemed wont to let him. The man’s tone had the amusement of a cat’s contented purr, but when he looked up, half-expecting to see only leaves and silhouettes, he found a man true enough, but one without any mirth beyond a stone’s capacity.
For a moment, terror of a different sort held him. Prayers began to dance at a fevered pace across his bewildered tongue. A ghost stood before him, and he knew he had wandered far indeed—passed from the forest into some faerie’s glade, straight beyond the mortal circle into some other dreaded coil.
This Matair was dead.
Dead men without heads, however, did not regain them with their end. The Church was clear enough about that.
He bit the dogma off as he forced himself to focus—to look beyond the initial thrust of dread’s spear. To the perfectly attached head. To the limpless leg, propping the unsightly slender figure—for his breed, at least. That, and the lightless haze of green that marked but one of that family told him this was an altogether different demon. He knew this man. Not by face, but by name. And then, he dreaded all the more because of it.
There was no menace in the way Isaak Matair moved toward him, but there never was. Emotion never touched this one’s blades. Not like Voren. Not unless he needed it for something else. Yet the threat hung about his very airs, weighted down with the force of rumor and blood.
“You walk with the camp, boy.” It was not a question. “And you walk out of it. Tell me: does my brother take the same fool’s path?”
Another step, another inch closer to the end. Voren stared at him, blank as a slate. He could hear the dog panting, but his eyes seemed incapable of parting from the man to find it. He knew he should run. He tried to will himself to do so. But he couldn’t. Fight. Flight. Truly, he knew what the deer felt like when they beheld the creaking of the bow.
If a banshee ever took your name, the village wives whispered, they held your soul beyond the lines of life’s spheres. This man knew him. Not just as another boy, but to his core. His servile, cowardly core.
He knew not what else to say. “I-I can take you to him. Ser, he lives, please, if you’ll just allow me. I can.”
The man did not move another step. Merely, he leaned a little forward, tilting his head to catch the light just so. “Yes,” a fleeting patch of voice erupted, “you will.”
* *
A band of them hunted through the forest. For game, or stragglers. Either was as good as the other. Patchwork colors, but well-armed: brigandine and hardy cuirasses, with sturdy tools of war to match them. They had learned the perils of their long guns—powerful, terrifying, but useless at a range, and all but worthless in the quick, ruthless skirmishes of the forest. So the fiery limbs lay stretched across their backs. Silent, unassuming.
All around them, the ghosts of the forest rose to stalk them. They did not even realize they had gone too far. Yet so like a deer, possessed of that last moment of prescience, one of them lifted a head, hand to his axe, and peered out at them. He tensed.
So too did a little bear, except that she tensed with the pull of a bow. The creak of it thrummed in her like the beating of her own heart. Muscles strained. No wind to speak of. Only two cool, dark eyes, shining like torches through the gloom. They said to kill a man was nothing like an animal. In truth, it was no different. Each fought death with every fiber of its being. Her whole body sighed with the loosing of grey goose fletched death. Another arrow was already in hand by the time the first struck home.
They had thought themselves the hunters. So like animals, the unsuspecting pack knew terror in that moment. As the first went down, the others panicked. One barked out orders for a circle, but by the time the words had left his mouth, half a dozen others followed that first into death. The rest trailed shortly, not one having ever cast upon their foe, nor even fired a shot.
A perfect hunt, she thought mirthlessly. When the men’s deaths drew to certainty, a high-pitched whistle bounded off the trees. Only then did Roswitte and the others shuffle from their concealment.
Ten lay dead. Quickly. Cleanly. Their killers stood admiring their work.
The battle at the river was a thing of intimidation. Nothing more. Its purpose had been to show the invaders fear and taint their southern march with it. This was how the people of the Ulneberg fought their battles. Such a mass as Tessel’s was good for playing proper war. It could not cope with the buzz of a hundred little skirmishes like these.
“Collect their sticks. Salvage the armor if able. Strip the bodies and leave them for the wolves.”
Fear was a powerful weapon. Couple it with exhaustion and one could sap even the greatest of hosts. The dead would be a warning. If Tessel were wise, he would heed it. If not, than the earth would feast.
She plucked her arrow from a dead man. His wide, gulping eyes stared back at her, and she wondered if they, too, had known the sundering of hope. Or if it had clung there until that final, rasping moment. If he had known a family.
“I killed him,” Ivon had confessed to her in the aftermath of Verdan. “I saw him and still I trained the cannons. I could do no other, but it makes no difference. I am kinslayer.” But weren’t they all, in one way or another? All men walked the same path. All were brothers in the journey. Yet the arrows fell indiscriminate and uncaring among them, and the bodies were many.
Even so, she had never seen that soldier so shaken. She shifted uncomfortably and knocked the dead man’s eyes away. Let it not be so.
For her, every corpse was Fallit’s. She did not wish Ivon to forever after see his brother among the dead. To look up from a kill and see naught but sunken eyes and wispy threads of memory walking silent and alone among the broken and the burned. As for the boy, what madness, that he would come so far only to die at the very gates of his home. She did not long to tell Liesa.
Did you get to see your blood one more time, at least?
Perhaps. But not little Anelie.
This last tricked her step as she moved away from the site of the ambush. That child had so little. Wherever she now stood, this news would break her. Let it not be so.
After looting the dead—“May Assal forgive you,” their party’s leader quipped, “for no man shall suffer a traitor to live”—they struck south and west, skirting the perimeter of Tessel’s relentless searches. They were nearly to the rendezvous set with other likeminded parties when they happened on another treasure. Before them, a resplen
dent train of folk cast about the woods as if searching out a spot to dine. All were armed, but not one had drawn.
Their leader drew his fist tight and all fell back a pace, crouching, watching, debating, but Roswitte knew the colors of the banner this strange party flew. What’s more, she recognized the stark look and black hair of their apparent leader.
So like the mother. Only Liesa, after all, would march a train of soldiers into the trees, glowing like a torch in all the colors of her station, rapier unused at her hip, and never pause to wonder at the oddity. Though, in truth, the only wonder about this picture was how the group had come so far without getting themselves feathered by another of Witold’s war parties. White flag or no, most would not have hesitated.
Roswitte made no attempt to conceal her approach. Voices hissed after her, and her party’s leader tried to grope for her arm, but she hopped aside and hurried out. As though merely returning from a stroll, she marched straight into the embassy’s midst and struck a knee before their hopelessly bewildered leader. A pity, child, you never took to the trees as your brothers did. She kept her eyes raised to the woman, for all her show of deference, for Liesa would not have had it any other way.
How she had loathed to leave this woman behind, days earlier, when Ivon had fled the army’s advance. Some people were intractable. Admirable trait, if it didn’t get them killed.
Their exchange was curt, and while the men cloistered about her stood aggravated and uncertain, Liesa cut straight to her point: Witold and her brother. Given that was where they were already headed, it was easily done. Another whistle drew Roswitte’s own men out—though no few of them caught bemused scowls from the Verdanites at the sight of drawn bows. Liesa herself looked little surprised. She merely offered Roswitte her hand to help her up, along with some quip about shots in the dark.
Careful as they moved, it was nearly an hour to the rendezvous. From there, buoyed in number—though less than they had hoped—they trekked swiftly south, in a line straight for Witold’s temporary reprieve this side of the river. It took another few hours, by the tracking of the shadows, but they reached the place without incident.
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