by Jackson Lear
The sky was lighter. A fine day would soon be upon us, if we lived that long. A mile away, the doctors were in full retreat. A girl was with them. Young. Dragged along, her hands bound together.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
I sprinted, heaving after the two mile hustle with broken ribs, minimal food, and no sleep. To my side and overtaking me quickly came Runaway. He was absolutely for it, full charge, no chance of recovery. All the while he was priming himself to the point of passing out. The count of ten passed. Then twenty. Up to fifty before I started to gain on him again. He made it to a hundred before he staggered to a walk, shaking, unable to breathe. He raised one hand and murmured: “Get the fuck back here.”
He collapsed, down to one knee then a slow roll onto his back, throwing one hand across his stomach and kicking back with one leg. The momentum in his legs was still on full blast while the rest of him lay utterly spent.
I dropped down next to him. “You okay?”
He gasped. Nodded. “I got the one dragging the girl away.”
I looked up. Six people had been on the run; five doctors and one hostage. One lay on the ground. Two people stood over her, trying to help her up. The girl was running off to the side as fast as she could, chased now by a man and a woman reaching out for her. They would’ve starved her. Dehydrated her as well. She wouldn’t be able to run for long before collapsing.
Greaser came hobbling beside me, gasping at a lack of breath. Sweat mixed with blood poured into his eyes. He wiped his brow clean, squinted into the distance, said, “Autumn.”
The man closest to Día tripped. The old woman closed in on Día. A flash of steel in her hand.
“Autumn,” Greaser said again.
The woman staggered, caught off balance. It bought Día a few extra seconds but it wouldn’t be enough.
Greaser pushed me forward. “You better hurry.”
Fucking hell. I ran on, hobbling on an ankle that was getting worse with every step. The man Greaser had tripped rose to his feet, found me drawing closer. Seventy years old. Desten senior if I had to guess. He had magic left. I didn’t. He raised his hand towards me.
I dropped, trying to break his line of sight, all the while thinking, miss me, miss me, please gods let him miss me.
In a split second I was consumed by explosive agony, my ribs vibrating like an earthquake was ripping through my chest, tearing me apart from the inside out. I gasped for air. None would come. The panic of drowning kicked in again. Down I went, more, the ground somehow next to my head, the sky whitening like paper. I couldn’t understand what was happening to me.
Then time faded.
I was gone.
My hearing gone. My vision a thing of the past. Around me came the murmurs. I couldn’t hear a single one of them but I felt them through my soul. Light past before me. Shapes. Slowly, the patterns started to make sense.
A man running impossibly slowly, three gargantuan wolves leaping towards him. Elsewhere, a mother collapsed on her side, a donkey mulling around, and a five year old child pulling on her mother’s hand, trying to get her back to her feet. Behind me, the swell of storm clouds swirling just above the ground. Six strangers in robes shouting in unison, a muffled tone of shrill voices, and the rising of a creature from the beyond. Amid them all, a fourteen year old girl bound in ropes. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Starving. Shrieking.
The first friend I ever had.
The Eyeless Ghost swooped down, dug its hand deep into her chest, reaching in and drawing Kiera away. A single glint of light lifted upward, snatched in the claws of the ghost. It shot forward, free of the storm winds and sprinted with unfathomable speed, moving as quickly as the sun traveled across the land.
Kiera lay still, her eyes wide open, her last breath departed.
“For Brayen,” I muttered.
The chuckling around me grew stronger.
“And for Raike.”
They cackled.
In the snap of air I felt a gasp. Not from me but someone nearby. My vision returned. My ears came back with a thump of boots beside me. Lieutenant peered down. I couldn’t help but see that he looked ragged and in desperate need of a shave. Lines on his face. Blood shot eyes. Grit up his nose. He held his hand out. I took it.
Desten senior lay on the ground, a javelin sticking out of his chest. His spell around me no longer an issue. The old woman had Día on the ground, wrestling with her to keep still. The other three doctors were farther to my left. They faced us but were backing away.
“Can you move?” Lieutenant asked me.
“I don’t know.”
Greaser and Runaway maneuvered to the left. One of the three doctors raised his hand towards us. Lieutenant dropped down and threw me back to the ground.
I rolled to the right, peering up with my chin still on the grass. “Día’s still alive.”
“I’m utterly spent,” said Lieutenant.
“Me too.” I rolled again until a low boulder was able to cover me. I pushed myself back up. The old woman knew exactly where I was and where she thought Lieutenant might still be, but she couldn’t figure out if we were together or had separated.
I ducked down again, crawled over a mix of jagged rocks and flecks of grass. Lieutenant did the same.
A howl and a thump came from our left. Not Greaser. Nor Runaway.
Of the three doctors, one had dropped. Runaway pulled his blade free. The other two were running towards the old woman and Día. Greaser was chasing them down. Slower, heavier, but he was armed and had been in more fights to the death than those two lithe and elderly men.
I sprung up, charging forward as the old woman turned to see what had happened to her compatriots. She didn’t stay distracted for long. She looked back. Locked eyes with me. I was going down, no question about it. Fifty yards away. Uneven ground. I could be there in less than ten seconds but I wasn’t going to make it.
Lieutenant charged in towards the old woman, his long sword weighing him down, shouting, trying to draw her attention away from me. But she knew. Of the four of us, she knew who couldn’t be bargained with.
I grimaced. Too fast to drop to the ground. Too rocky to get back up again in a hurry. No option but to keep on going.
She muttered.
Día flicked both hands upward, her hands still tied together, and clobbered the old woman in the face.
The old woman stumbled. I charged, shoulder braced, hoping like hell that I wasn’t about to smash into Día as well.
It didn’t work out so well. The woman landed, dazed, with the last thing on her mind still targeting me.
I shrieked, a sound I had never expected to come from me, yet there it was. I blacked out, heading face first into the rocky ground.
One of the doctors, seeing the old woman an imminent lost cause and with Lieutenant able to reach either him or her, turned, veering away from us. The other found his ally running for his life. The uneven rock dipped out from under him. His leg hit the ground at full extension, lower than he expected, his eyes widening as an electric jolt ran through his body. Greaser waved his arm to the left, pointing, directing Runaway to go after the one fleeing while Greaser charged into the staggerer.
Greaser’s target spun, stumbling, settling his eyes onto the mage chasing after him.
Lieutenant hollered: “DIE!” Nothing but a distraction.
Greaser’s target recoiled, frightened of being targeted by another mage, but Lieutenant was back onto the old woman. Greaser raised his hand, palm stretched, ready to blast the staggerer with a spell he didn’t have. The staggerer fired one off, crippling Greaser in an instant and bringing him down. He turned, Lieutenant shifting again. Another spell, sucker punching Lieutenant and dropping him to his knees.
I came to, out for barely a heartbeat but long enough to see the old woman still wrestling with Día as the girl fought with every last breath she had in her.
I got to my feet. Closed in.
The woman and man each had one of Día’s arms. Día froze,
locking her body as rigid as possible. “She dies if you come any closer!” shouted the old woman.
I stopped my advance. We were talking. Good. I needed my pulse to settle. Air in my lungs. And for everyone else to prepare something sneaky. I looked over Día. Younger than I expected. Fragile, though that was something recent. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Hair matted. Looked like she had a nice smile, if she wasn’t so close to being murdered. Some distant memory came forward: she likes to sing. Not sure how that popped into my head but there it was.
I returned to the old woman. Her nostrils pinched so tightly together I doubted she could even breathe with her mouth closed. Loose skin under her chin like a cockerel. Her hair coming undone from a week without sleep. Her eyes half wild, far from a warrior’s returning to camp and drenched in blood, but rather that of a scattered madness; a woman who had courted darkness for a hundred years already, long enough to forget everything except what compelled her to begin her path in the first place. There she was, it’s emissary, holding a knife against a thirteen year old girl’s throat. “Latelli, I presume?”
A look of impossibility. I had her.
“Twenty years ago. Here. Kiera. Do you remember her?”
Something registered behind her eyes. Desten senior had no doubt told her all about me.
“All of you were involved. All to save Lady Kasera.” I took a step forward. “You should’ve killed me back then as well. I was only fourteen. Would’ve been easy enough. Isn’t hindsight a wonderful thing?”
The man called out. “How much do you want?”
I stepped forward.
“Ten thousand marks?”
I took another step forward, turning Lieutenant’s dinky blade over in my fingers.
“Twenty?”
Another step.
“Each?”
Clunk.
A javelin. Its point no longer functional after impacting into Desten senior but still capable of hitting someone in the head.
The male doctor pitched forward, stars in his eyes. Greaser stepped away from Desten’s body, seething, his chest and shoulders rippling with hurricane-like violence.
The old woman backed away with her hostage, leaving her compatriot alone. The old man tried to right himself, onto his side, then up to his feet. Greaser twenty yards away. Lieutenant ten.
The doctor raised his hands. “Please.”
“Release the girl and you can go,” said Lieutenant.
I moved in on the old woman, matching her pace for pace. She snarled at me, angling the blade so I could see it. “Don’t you come any closer.”
Lieutenant gave them another chance. Six yards away. “Release her and one of you can go.”
“We can’t,” said the male doctor, retreating. “We need her to save someone.”
“Who?”
He knew exactly who but whatever code he had sworn to uphold, he upheld it.
Three yards away. “Release her and we’ll make it quick.”
The whites in the doctor’s eyes flashed in fear.
Greaser, ten yards away. Runaway coming up behind the old woman. She turned, searching everything around her, trying to find a way to escape, her blade digging in against her hostage’s throat. A beam of celestial light rising in the east and lighting the sky to a golden day.
I looked to the girl, trying my best to sound soothing. “Día?”
She whimpered.
Latelli dug her blade against her throat. “Come any closer and she dies.”
“How old are you?” I asked Latelli.
She backed farther away. The old man moving towards her.
We matched them.
“I will kill her if you come any closer!” she shrieked.
“I’m only curious,” I said. “Eighty? A hundred and eighty?”
Latelli and the old man continued to stumble backwards, desperately searching the horizon for any way out. “You call your people off or the girl will die.”
Día whimpered again, the agony of being awake for so long, going through a whirlwind of fright and desperation finally settling in.
The old woman started concentrating, her eyes losing focus as she summoned a well of energy from deep inside.
I had one trick left up my sleeve. Twenty years of exhaustion had left its mark on me. Time to pay it back.
She caught her heel against the rough ground. Día’s eyes lit up in fright, at falling backwards with a knife against her throat.
I locked onto the bitch who took Kiera away from me. “Farewell.”
Latelli catapulted forward, hurled twenty yards towards me in the blink of an eye. I sliced through the air, stepping out of the way as she carried on another twenty yards before crumpling to the ground and kicking up a mountain of dirt.
Blood dripped from my blade. Hers. I looked back. Día was on the ground, trying to pick herself up. Lieutenant swung into the male doctor, his sword connecting with the man’s arm – a cry of fright – then a swing above. Lieutenant’s sword met the doctor’s neck, spraying blood across the morning grass.
I turned back to the old woman, crunching over the ground like I was a demon coming for her soul. She pushed herself onto one elbow. Her other hand gripped her ribs.
“Wait …”
I rolled her over. She had taken a forty yard launch face-first into dirt. I crouched down, balling her hair into my fist.
“I can help you!”
I pressed my blade hard against her throat. A drop of blood formed across my blade. “I’m sure you have a pact with some kind of demon down below. You’d better hope they honor it.”
“Wait … wait! Kiera’s still alive!”
I leaned in so that the last thing she would see were the white of my eyes. “But she’s the exception, isn’t she?”
She faltered.
And with a flick of my wrist, I slashed her throat.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
I waited by the old woman until she was no more. Searched her. Nothing of interest. I returned to Día, Lieutenant, Greaser, and Runaway, as they untied the rope holding the girl’s wrists together. “I’m Raike. One of the good guys. You’re going to be okay.”
She stared back at me, uncertain. I can’t really blame her, considering I looked and felt like I should be dead. We all did.
“Can you walk?”
“I don’t know,” she rasped. Her strength had vanished. Her voice was coarse from crying out but she was alive.
Runaway looked to the doctor’s camp. They may have starved themselves in preparation of summoning the Eyeless Ghost but they would certainly need food the moment they were done. “I’ll hunt around for something.”
Greaser held his hand out to the girl. “I’m Eldin.”
“Día,” she mumbled, taking his hand and shaking it nervously.
I stared back at Greaser. Eldin, of all names. He shrugged it off.
Runaway returned with a basket of food. Cured meat. Dates. Vinegared bread. He offered something of everything to Día first then gave us each a sliver of food. The moment the food hit my gut I nearly threw it back up again.
“Slower you idiot,” muttered Greaser. “It’s like you’ve never done this before.”
Día ate in silence, staring at us with a great deal of trepidation.
Lieutenant shooed us away. “Feel free to give her some space, guys.”
We backed off. I led Greaser to the old woman. “What do you make of her?”
Her face was a mess of blood and dirt from her landing. He checked her pulse, he checked her eyes, he checked her hair, he checked her teeth. He put his nose to her mouth and breathed in. “She’s ancient.”
“More than a hundred years old?”
“Probably. No way to tell.” He peered back at me as though he expected my tattered clothes to shed and an angelic visage to emerge from underneath. “We have a lot of cleaning up to do.”
“We can leave the bodies here for the wolves.”
“And what about Vanguard?”
“They’ve been looking for an alliance with Ispar, right? How hard will it be to nudge Ispar into a territorial claim now that Vanguard are twelve men down?”
“They’ll probably think of that themselves.”
“Eight of Vanguard’s weakest died in Ispar’s territory. It won’t take much for them to accuse each other of provoking a war.”
“That’s a big risk, leaving it to chance,” said Greaser.
“I’ll see what I can do about tidying it up a little.”
Greaser nodded, dejectedly. “Four spells in one rest period.”
“Three. I’ve been charging that last one for a while.”
“Risky. She might’ve exploded. You both could’ve.” He cast his eyes back to her for a moment. “Did she say anything?”
“Yeah. The Kaseras have known my name for a lot longer than they’ve cared for.”
We returned to Día. She had eaten her fill of cured meat and was holding back a burp. I dropped down in front of her, sitting for what felt like the first time in days. I was pretty sure that was a mistake I would regret the moment I tried to stand up again. “You’re from the orphanage in Red Hill, right?”
“Yes,” said Día.
“Have you heard of the Kasera family before?”
“They give food and clothes to the orphanage.”
“A lot of it?”
“No.”
“But enough so that people don’t go hungry?”
“I think so.”
Admittedly, there’s never enough food for kids and feeding orphans would be a low priority. I looked to Lieutenant. “We should introduce her to Kasera.”
“You’re sure?”
The words struggled to come forth, like I’ve never had to say them before. “It feels like the right thing to do.”
Día looked at us, trying to match what she saw with what she heard. “Are you in the army?”
“No, ma’am. We’re private security.”
She strained a look, asking herself why a general would need someone like us on his payroll.
