Bisecter

by Stephanie Fazio

  “These Halves don’t matter. It’s the ones at Tanguro we need to figure out how to kill.”

  “I know,” Wade says.

  There’s sympathy in his voice, but I’m too frustrated to give it more than a passing thought.

  “While there’s low day left,” I throw my hands up at the sun, “we should be moving on. Every minute we delay….”

  Brice would have understood my desperation. He always understood when it came to the Halves.

  “I know.” Wade puts down his armful of sticks and walks over to me.

  I feel jittery, like I have too much energy and nothing to do with it. I should be using my strength to reach Tanguro. Instead, I’m gathering sticks for a cookfire and wasting time. I go to kick at another rock, but I lose my balance.

  I curse as my feet tangle up in each other. I close my eyes, waiting for the impact as my backside hits the ground. All I feel are warm arms encircling me.

  “Careful,” Wade breathes as he sets me on my feet. “How would I explain it to everyone if our most valuable weapon injured herself?”

  Most valuable weapon?

  I’m about to reply, but I realize Wade’s arms are still around me.

  “Thanks,” I say. “I’m good.”

  “Wade!”

  Sal’s voice makes us both jump.

  “Come on boy, I need you scouting before high day comes. And you, Hemera, let’s hurry up with that firewood.”

  For once, Wade doesn’t offer a witty remark or joke. I look at him, but he’s already walking away from me. I bend down to pick up the firewood I dropped and wait for the thudding of my heart to slow.

  Anger—at Wade or myself, I’m not sure—wars with confusion inside me.

  What just happened?

  ✽✽✽

  After we’ve eaten, we all try to carve out a space for ourselves in the cramped, stuffy cave. The soldiers’ banter turns to low murmurs. As weariness overtakes me, I’m pressed back into a memory I forgot I still had.

  It was my eighth birthday, and my father decided it was time for me to learn how to hunt. He took me into the woods and showed me how to track the capy pigs that left muddy hoofprints on the rocks near the river. Their meat is stringy and tough, but they’re slow-moving and make for easy targets.

  When we found the herd, my father gave me a dagger and told me to kill one. I chose a capy pig rooting in the ground away from the others. I snuck up on it, but at the moment before my dagger struck, the capy sensed me. It turned to look at me and let out a terrible cry.

  Its eyes had the same frightened, knowing look I saw in the Halve today.

  When I open my eyes, sweat pours down my face. It’s not until I sit up that the glassy eyes of the dead Halve fade.

  ✽✽✽

  We’re forced to slow our pace as the landscape changes from forest to bare rock. Every time I take my eyes off the ground, my ankle turns on a jagged stone. We have abandoned our tight formation. Everyone fans out as we pick our way over the rocks in a drunken fashion to make semi-northward progress.

  The sun is relentless, and there is little shade to offer relief. When I can’t stand it for another minute, I take off my cloak and tuck it into my pack so I’m wearing only my thin shirt and cotton pants. Everyone else wilts under their heavy cloaks.

  “Must be nice,” Jarosh mutters, but there’s no malice in his words. We haven’t spoken much since I saved his life, but on more than one occasion, he’s hushed a soldier for trying to talk about what I did to Gwendil.

  “Did you always know about everything you could do because of what you are?” Ry asks as we pick our way across a stretch of flatter land. Her curls, dark with sweat, hang limp against her face.

  I laugh. “You ask more questions than anyone I’ve ever met.”

  “Tell me about it,” Wade mutters, but he’s grinning as Ry elbows him.

  “Psh, like you’re one to talk,” Ry laughs. “Since all you do is talk…all the time.”

  “I can do a lot more than talk,” Wade says, giving her a wink.

  “Gross.” Ry screws up her face.

  Their easy friendship sends an unfamiliar twinge of jealousy through me.

  “I knew I was strong and fast,” I say. “I didn’t put it together about the healing or that I can’t get the Burn until more recently, though.”

  And now I can add healing people who have been poisoned by Halve blood to the list.

  Ry opens her mouth to ask something else, but at that moment, a black arrow whizzes past her cheek.

  There’s a sound like the fluttering of hundreds of wings, and then the sunlight dims as arrows fly toward us.

  “What the—”

  “Run!”

  CHAPTER 29

  We all take off, desperate to get out of the arrows’ path.

  “This way,” Sal calls, trying to herd our company.

  I put out a hand, blocking an arrow headed straight for my face. The point goes straight through my hand. A cry rips through me, but I don’t stop. I snap the arrow in two with my other hand as I run. With another scream, I yank it free from my flesh.

  “Take cover,” Sal commands.

  Shouts come from every direction.

  “Those rocks over there,” Ry gasps. She releases her arrows as she runs, her eyes tracking movement I can’t see.

  Beside me, Wade stops running. I grab his arm and yank him along beside me.

  “Sal,” he yells, trying to break free from me.

  “He’ll—be—fine—” with each word, Ry lets fly an arrow.

  We have outrun the worst of it, but we don’t stop until we’ve thrown ourselves behind the giant rocks that serve as a natural barrier from the attack. Wade struggles, trying to go back out to where Sal and the archers are exposed. Jarosh and I hold him back.

  “Your sword can’t help them!” Jarosh yells at Wade. “You’ll get yourself killed.”

  I’m shoved to the far edge of our shelter as the rest of our company squeeze in beside us.

  “Get away from me, freak.” Gorgoran, the first one to make it into the shelter, jabs me hard in the ribs. I bare my teeth at him before turning my attention back to the fighting.

  “Over here!” Ry is shouting just past our hiding place. She gestures between shots. Squinting, I see movement all along the mountain’s base. I hadn’t noticed it before because the Duskers’ gray cloaks make them almost invisible against the bare rock.

  It takes three tries for my fumbling fingers to take a stone from my leather pouch, but we’re packed too close together for me to wind the ropes of my sling. By the time I manage to shove my way past Gorgoran and into the open, the Duskers’ arrows are spent and they’ve disappeared from view.

  “Will they be back?”

  “They’re out of arrows. Those cowards won’t come down and fight like men.”

  “Or women,” Ry corrects as the others make their way out from behind the safety of the rocks.

  Arrows litter the ground where we had been minutes earlier. Incredibly, there are no bodies on the ground.

  Jarosh, making the same observation, lets out a whoop. “Take that ya bastards!” he shouts, kicking up a spray of dirt in the general direction of the mountain.

  “They knew we’d be here,” Wade says, echoing my own thoughts. “How could they have known?”

  “Maybe we have a Dusker spy in our midst.” Gorgoran makes a point of directing his full gaze on me.

  I scowl back at him.

  “They’ll be back.” Sal calls over his shoulder, his voice hoarse. “We need to reach the western edge of the range before high day.”

  He takes two drunken steps forward. His legs seem to give out beneath him, and our leader crumples to the ground.

  “Sal!”

  Everyone surges forward, but Wade is the first to his side.

  The rest of us form a protective semi-circle around them, the archers taking up positions on our outside. Wade crouches on the ground beside our leader and raises him to
a sitting position. We all suck in a collective breath at the sight of two black arrows sticking out of Sal’s chest. Patches of blood make a neat circle around each of the arrows.

  Oh no. Bile surges up from my stomach.

  Wade is holding up Sal’s head, talking to him, telling him everything will be fine. My heart aches for them both.

  “Never,” Wade says to whatever Sal has just whispered. Both of their faces are Dusker pale.

  “Are there any healers in the company?” someone demands.

  “There was only Gwendil….”

  My stomach turns.

  “Leave me.” Sal raises his voice enough for the rest of us to hear.

  “Those arrows need to come out,” Jarosh says, ignoring the command.

  A large bottle of brown liquid appears from someone’s pack and is passed forward. Wade tilts Sal’s head back and lets the liquid trickle past his lips. It makes him cough and gasp. Two men move into place on either side of our leader to hold him still. Wade places one hand on Sal’s chest and wraps the other around the arrow’s shaft. I stifle a gasp.

  I clap a hand over my mouth to keep my own screams from mingling with Sal’s. Blood leaps up and speckles Wade’s face.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Wade chants as takes hold of the second arrow.

  I don’t want to look, but I can’t tear my eyes away from the scene in front of me. Sal goes quiet as he collapses in a faint. The rocks beside him are spattered with blood.

  A roll of tightly-wrapped cloth is passed to Wade, who rolls it around and around Sal’s torso. Blood seeps through each layer of cloth.

  “Maybe roll it tighter?” I venture.

  “It is tight,” Wade snaps through gritted teeth.

  “We need help,” another man states the obvious.

  “And where do you expect that help to come from?” Ry demands.

  “If we can get him to Tanguro maybe….”

  “Oh yeah.” Wade’s voice drips with bitterness. “I’m sure the Halves keep loads of medicine on hand.”

  “No, but the Dusker there might,” I point out, ignoring his sarcasm.

  “We can’t just stay here and wait for Halves or Duskers to come for us,” Ry says. “We have to try.” She grips her bow with both hands.

  “There are hyenair in the mountains, too,” someone else says. “They’ll smell the blood.”

  The mention of hyenair makes me think of my friends back in the fortress. If Dayne was here, he’d know what to do. He’d be able to save Sal.

  “He can’t walk,” someone gestures at Sal’s crumpled form.

  The look on Wade’s face makes me feel sick. I have to do something.

  “I can carry him,” I offer.

  A few of the men snort in response. Wade is the only one in the company who knows how strong I am. I look at him.

  “It’s too far.” Jarosh covers his face with his hands, but it doesn’t hide the agony in his voice. “He’ll never make it.”

  “He’ll make it.” Wade leaps to his feet, his eyes molten fire.

  We set to work tearing off leather straps from our packs to fashion a makeshift harness. Wade doesn’t leave Sal’s side for a moment. He presses a wet cloth to the older man’s feverish skin, muttering soothing words to him all the while. I remember the way Wade and Sal looked at each other that first time in the clearing. Wade said Sal was more like a father to him than his real one had been. If anything happens to Sal….

  Fatigue and heat exhaustion hang on the company. No one needs reminding about the urgency of our task.

  When everything is ready, Wade helps Sal off the ground.

  “Hemera, I should be the one—” Wade begins, but I interrupt him.

  “You can walk next to us and talk to him. He’ll want to be able to see you when he’s awake.”

  It takes three men to lift Sal and strap him to the harness on my back.

  When I take my first step, everyone crowds around me, convinced I will collapse under Sal’s weight. When I don’t falter, there are a few appreciative murmurs and a few sighs of relief. I don’t wait to hear what they’re saying about me as I set a course north, straight for the mountains.

  Ry glances at the angle of her shadow and then at Brice’s map. “We should be able to reach the next travel cave by high day.” She frowns. “I think.”

  “We’d better,” Gorgoran growls. “I’m not going to be Burn vulture food.”

  As the sun climbs toward high day, our company scrambles up the steep, uneven rocks. Heat from the ground scorches my feet through the soles of my boots. The others are straining under the weight of their cloaks. Their huffing and grunts as they clamber up the hillside are interrupted only by the rocks we dislodge and send rolling behind us.

  Between breaths, Wade encourages Sal. Our leader rarely replies with anything more than a moan. At least I can feel the quick pulse of his heart against my back. I don’t have to ask Wade if the bleeding has stopped; I try not to think about the wetness pressing through the material of my own shirt.

  Hold on, Sal.

  As we make our way up a slow-rising cliff, the rocks become larger and smoother. I try to jostle Sal as little as possible as I pull myself up each ledge. Some of the rocks are too high for me to climb with Sal on my back. At every ledge, we unharness Sal while I scramble onto the rock, and then reach down as the others lift Sal up to me. Our progress is agonizingly slow.

  There is less than an hour before high day. Blisters from the Burn are already starting to form on some of the Solguards’ faces. Their hair drips with sweat. Our last sips of water were drunk hours ago.

  I glance at Wade. Despite the heat, his face is ashen. He grips Sal’s limp hand as he walks beside me. My chest aches for what I know he’s feeling.

  Sal, who has been silent for some time, begins to moan again. “Let me down,” he gasps.

  Wade undoes the straps binding Sal to my back and lowers him to the ground.

  I stifle a groan at the sight of our leader. His body quivers, and his face is twisted in pain.

  “Sal, please. You’re going to be fine,” Wade begs as he kneels beside him. He uses his sleeve to wipe the sweat from Sal’s brow.

  Sal reaches an unsteady hand toward Wade, who clutches it and cradles it against his chest.

  A lump too big to swallow is lodged in my throat.

  “Leave me here,” Sal demands in a raspy voice.

  Wade looks up at the cliff we have partly climbed. “It’s just a bit farther.”

  “You have a mission.” His chest rises and falls, the crimson patch spreading with even that tiny movement.

  “We can’t do this without you,” Wade pleads, his voice breaking.

  “You must.” Sal struggles to sit up but can’t muster the strength.

  I feel tears sliding down my cheeks but make no attempt to wipe them away.

  “I won’t leave you.” Wade shifts his own body to cover the top part of Sal in shade.

  A few of the soldiers who fought most ferociously against the Halves, and who didn’t bat an eye at the Duskers’ attack, watch with red-rimmed eyes as Wade pleads with Sal. A man has turned away, his shoulders shaking with silent sobs.

  Sal’s lips are tinged blue. A rattling sound comes from his labored breathing.

  Do something, my inner voice screams. But there’s nothing to be done.

  I’m not sure if we have been here for minutes or hours. I look from Sal to the cliff’s peak, which is a hard climb away. If we don’t make it to the next cave on Brice’s map by high day, the rest of the company will die.

  Sal opens his eyes. “Wade.”

  He mutters something for Wade’s ears alone.

  With a long, ragged sigh, Sal stops shivering. His free arm, the one not clutched between Wade’s hands, slumps by his side. His eyes are open and glassy.

  “Sal!” Wade shakes him.

  “Wade—”

  “Sal, get up. We have to keep going. Get up!”

 
Ry tries to pull Wade away from Sal.

  “No, let go of me.” Wade shakes Ry off. “Sal!”

  Jarosh leans close to Sal, and then in a broken, exhausted voice, announces, “He’s gone.”

  “He isn’t gone!” Wade pulls away from Ry. “Sal, get up. Please get up!”

  Wade collapses to the ground. He gather’s Sal’s body in his arms, burying his face against him. “Please. Please.”

  I can’t bear to watch anymore. No one speaks.

  “Wade, we have to go, and we can’t bring him.” Ry’s voice breaks. She wipes her eyes with her sleeve. She kneels beside Wade, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder.

  Wade doesn’t move. He lowers his head in the folds of Sal’s cloak as his body is wracked with quiet sobs.

  Looking down at them is almost like looking through a mirror of the past. If someone had been watching me sob over my mother’s body, they would have observed the same scene. Even as my heart breaks for Wade, I know there’s nothing I can say or do to ease his pain.

  It’s maddening.

  We all look at each other, our own heartbreak and anger reflected on each other’s faces.

  Wade wipes his sleeve across his face and then sits back on his heels. He closes Sal’s eyes before bending to kiss his forehead. As he does so, Wade slips a pendant tied on a string over Sal’s neck and pulls it over his head. Before the pendant disappears beneath the nape of Wade’s cloak, I see it’s the spiraling sun, plated in gold.

  “I can’t stand the thought of animals getting to him,” I hear Jarosh say to another Solguard.

  I remember my own fierce need to bury my mother’s body after she was killed. Somehow, it had given me the smallest measure of relief. I look around at the barren landscape. The ground is too hard to dig, and we have no tools, besides. But we could at least protect his body under a shield of rocks so the Burn vultures won’t be able to defile him.

  Without saying anything, I start to collect rocks. Tentatively at first, I start a pile of rocks around Sal’s body. The others see what I’m doing and start to help.

  In less than a quarter of an hour, Wade is placing the final stone atop our makeshift grave. Ry hands him a branch with some dried leaves—the closest any of us could find to flowers in this desolate landscape—and Wade bows his head as he places the branch on top of the pile.