A Time of War and Demons

by S E Wendel

  Ennis waved Lora into the rocking chair as she stoked the fire and saw to lunch. She was already half asleep, her chin propped in her hand, when Ennis returned with a cold slice of meat pie.

  They lunched in companionable silence, the fire crackling beside them, a welcome orange glow that made the room look a tad less somber.

  That was, until Kenna came barreling through the door.

  Leaping to her feet, Ennis croaked, “What it is? Manek?”

  “Someone’s at the wall, asking for you.”

  “For me?”

  “Unless you know another Ennis Courtnay.”

  Ennis and Lora shared a look.

  “Who in the Midland camp would want me?”

  “It could be a trap,” Lora said.

  “That’s what the other sentries thought,” said Kenna. “We sent the boy away from the wall. But he keeps shouting for you, saying his name’s Adena.”

  The blood drained from Ennis’s face as her mind tried to make sense of that name. It was almost a forgotten sound, ringing unfamiliar in her ears.

  “I’ll go.”

  Kenna glanced over Ennis’s shoulder at Lora then nodded. She led them to the southern stairs. Kenna set a meaningful pace, sentries making way for them on the catwalk.

  As they walked, Ennis’s pulse thrummed in her ears. She was all at once too cold and too hot, her cheeks feverish but her hands numb. All she could think of was Adena, that night so long ago in Highcrest, her eyes wide with horror. At how Ennis had slapped her to quiet her in the stairwell. At seeing their father dead along the cobblestones. At being chosen by Larn. At knowing she would die a warprize.

  A cluster of sentries hovered near the northern stairs. At Kenna’s bark, they moved away to make room for Ennis and Lora.

  No one stood before the gate but pacing in the tall grass just out of an arrow’s range was a golden head. It was all Ennis needed.

  “Keeps shouting for you, milady.”

  “They could mean to lure you out.”

  “Lord Manek said not to open the gate for any reason.”

  “Open the gate,” she said.

  The sentries looked amongst themselves, unsure, but after looking Ennis in the eye for a long moment, Kenna said, “Do as she says.”

  She waited for three men to move aside the gate just enough for her and Lora to slip out. Feeling the sentries’ gazes on her, their fingers no doubt twitching at their bows, Ennis forced herself to stride quickly rather than run to Adena.

  And it was Adena. Drawing closer only made her surer of it.

  Adena’s hair had been cut and her chest bound, making her appear to all the world a boy. A scrawny, wobbly, underfed boy. Her lips were chapped, her skin sunburned and sticky with sweat. She swayed as if unsteady on her feet, a drop of blood bubbling at the corner of her mouth. When Ennis called out, almost wild eyes turned on her.

  Adena looked from Ennis to Lora then back again, seemingly shocked into silence. Then something close to a smile flitted across her face, looking more like a grimace than anything else.

  She began to teeter, and Ennis flew to her, catching her in her arms. Despite her gauntness, Adena was strong as she clutched Ennis, her pulse beating rapidly in her delicate neck.

  She was so small, so thin, her face skeletal, her eyes dull except for a bright glint of panic. Her hands, always so beautiful, so delicate and precise, were broken, bloodied, calloused. She smelled of horses, men, and the road. But most especially of blood.

  “Hello, lioness,” Adena said, her voice thick, almost a gurgle. “I’ve found you.”

  Ennis let out a garbled sound, something between a sob and a shout, and cradled her sister close, chanting Adena’s name, stroking her hair, her cheeks, trying to comprehend who it was she held in her arms.

  “Adena, you’re here, you’re—”

  Adena clutched at her dress front. “You have to stop him.”

  “We will, Adena, we’re going to fight and—”

  She shook her head fiercely and laid her hand on Ennis’s cheek in a weak slap, more of a tap, but it silenced Ennis.

  “No, you have to stop Manek.”

  “Manek?” Ennis croaked. “What’re you talking about?”

  “The Lowland warlord,” Adena hurried on, “the man who’ll meet Larn this afternoon—it’s an ambush. I heard the men talking, brought them their meals and heard them say they’d take him at the meeting. They’re—”

  Adena convulsed, a thick, hacking cough drawing her into a ball, like the little bugs that rolled up when spotted. Ennis tried to hold her, keep her from spasming and hurting herself. Adena wheezed, spitting up clots of venous blood into the grass.

  Adena’s knees buckled, and Ennis yelped as they fell.

  “We’ve got to get her into Rising!” cried Ennis.

  “No, listen,” Adena moaned through bouts of coughing. “It’s an ambush. Larn will take him, kill him. He wants to torture him in sight of the town, try to get them to surrender for his life.”

  She gripped Ennis’s forearm and squeezed until it hurt. The sharp pain brought Ennis round from her panic, her thoughts and heartbeat wild from knowing Manek walked into a trap, to his very death. Adena’s grip, the bony strength of it, gave her fluttering thoughts a focus.

  Adena fixed her with a gaze that was so intent it sent a shiver down Ennis’s spine. “You have to stop him from going,” she said, her voice not her own, deepened somehow. “Manek can’t meet with Larn. He can’t die today. It will undo everything—” Adena lost herself in another coughing fit, and just as quickly as it had come, the fierceness of her gaze, her voice, was gone, leaving behind a weak, shuddering Adena who fought for her next breath.

  “Shh,” Ennis soothed, trying to mop up the blood.

  Lora hovered nearby, offering her apron when Ennis’s sleeve became soaked.

  “I know Manek,” Ennis said softly, petting Adena’s hair, trying to calm her as tears streamed from her eyes and blood gushed between her teeth. “I’ll speak with him. We’ll stop Larn, I promise. But we have to get you into Rising.”

  Adena groaned when Ennis and Lora tried to lift her. They had her in a wobbly stance when another cough hit her, sending her to her hands and knees. Ennis rubbed her back with shaking hands and was ready when she collapsed, drawing her near.

  “It’s all right,” Ennis cajoled. “Lora can make you better.”

  “We both knew it would kill me.”

  Ennis’s throat clenched, but she forced herself to say, “You’re not going to die, Adena. We have you now.”

  Adena looked up at Ennis with fathomless eyes, like a shifting sea. She smiled, a heartbreaking thing that may as well have been a blade, it cut Ennis so deeply. “This is how I wanted it, Ennis. To be in my sisters’ arms. I hoped I’d have more time. But to see you now…it’s enough. At least I could warn you.”

  Ennis lost herself in a sob. Pain, sharp and hot, lanced through her chest, as if someone cut a knife through her, wicked and sure. She shook her head, denying Adena’s words, refusing what they said.

  Adena touched a gentle hand to her head, and Ennis crushed it in her own. Another sad smile spread across Adena’s face, cutting Ennis to the quick.

  Adena wrapped her fingers around Ennis’s hair and tugged lightly. “Will you do something for me, lioness?”

  “Anything!”

  “Don’t let him follow me to Mithria. Gut him,” she said, her eyes like iron, “and leave him for the crows.”

  All the air in Ennis’s lungs escaped her in a violent hiss, but she managed to nod. Adena’s smile returned, and she looked happy, as if she’d just shown Ennis a new stitch pattern, not asked her to damn for eternity the soul of the man who’d tormented her.

  Adena’s smile dissolved then into a confused frowned, and she clutched at Ennis. “I see her. She’s come for me after all. She…she says she’s been looking for me—she couldn’t find me until now,” she murmured.

  Fear squeezed Ennis’s throat. “Wh
o, love?”

  Adena’s head lolled, a new, beatific smile overtaking her face. “Finally,” she said, and then was still.

  Ennis heard Lora weeping behind her.

  Heard but didn’t feel. Not immediately.

  Not until she felt the life seep from Adena, her body limp, her eyes dull. An inhuman wail escaped Ennis. Tears ran hot tracks down her face, clogging her nose, seeping into her mouth. It was like drowning, like sinking down and never coming up again.

  The gods had given her back Manek but weren’t kind enough for more.

  Her grief came hot and fast, tears soaking her skin and blotting out the sun. She wept for Adena, for the life they had had, and for the night that took it all away. She thought she’d never cry like this again, that she had nothing left in her to make tears so big, but they burned down her face. They felt like hot hands tracing her cheeks, blistering and heavy, pouring out as despair from her eyes to stream down her chin, neck, chest, to her heart, where they pooled and became anger. The feeling sat in her chest, gripping her heart and squeezing. Not enough air came in even though Ennis gasped for breath. She shook her head and wailed again, and then it was gone, the squeezing, but the fierce rage didn’t leave, only made her heart and head throb in time.

  She slowly became aware of Lora calling her name. At first it was soft coos of sympathy, a gentle hand on her shoulder, but then those fingers were claws and Lora was screaming, shaking Ennis, her fear permeating the air.

  Ennis pawed at her face, trying to clear her vision as Lora continued to shout.

  “Get up, Ennis, we have to move, they’re coming!”

  Her mind too slow to understand what she saw, Ennis watched as two groups of horsemen trotted towards one another. The gates of Rising closed behind Manek and his Lowlanders, and quickly they turned off the path and veered east, heading towards a slightly larger group of Midlanders, headed by Larn.

  She and Lora, though hidden well in the tall grass and some distance away, were still close enough to know who approached Rising. That shorn head gleamed in the midday sun, the only one brazen enough to be uncovered.

  She could distinguish little but that bare head and the impression of the slashing scar that bisected the left side of his face, yet it was enough. Knowing that he was so close, to poor Adena, to Rising, to Manek, was like the hammer stroke that drove the nail into place. Her mind returned as panic clutched her tight.

  Ennis laid Adena down gently before jumping to her feet.

  “Ennis—!” Lora made a grab for her hand and missed as she raced out of the grass, onto the path, and into the grass on the other side.

  “It’s an ambush!” she called over her shoulder in explanation, Adena’s words ringing in her ears.

  She shouted again and again as her feet crushed the grass beneath her. The tall stalks lashed her, and more than once she went down, unseen holes and debris catching at her toes. But she ran, ran faster than she thought possible, chasing down the groups who had come close, so close together.

  Manek and his men had dismounted but stayed within range of the archers standing post at the wall, but it was a distant shot.

  Larn said something, the words lost in the wind and grass, but she could hear the tone of it, the cadence, and her gut clenched. Manek took half a step forward.

  “MANEK!” she screamed, chanting his name rather than breathing.

  The back of the Lowland group turned their heads, hearing her cry, and a rustle went through them until finally, finally Manek turned.

  She didn’t stop but did take a breath, used it to scream, “It’s an ambush! He’ll take you!”

  The Lowlanders rumbled, watching her in surprise as she continued to barrel towards them. Manek took a step towards her.

  “Ennis—”

  “Manek, it’s—look out!”

  In a cacophony of movement, the Midlanders rushed the Lowland group, shoving away Manek’s men as greedy hands reached for him. He struggled to free his sword of its scabbard, but arms held him fast and he was quickly separated from the rest with horseflesh.

  Ennis screamed in outrage when they pushed him down to his knees, and though she didn’t know how, she put on a burst of speed, charging one of the men holding him down. She hit him full force and then went tumbling down in a heap of grunts and tangled limbs.

  Dark spots danced at the edges of her vision, but Ennis was dead down. She rolled away, trying to find Manek in the fray. The man she’d knocked down lay beside her, groaning, and she wasted no time stealing his dagger.

  It took her two tries to get her feet under her as the world titled. Breath sawed in and out of her chest as the skirmish raged around her, the Lowlanders trying to force their way to Manek while Larn and his men dragged him further away, out of the range of Rising’s archers.

  Ennis rushed them again, but a man was ready for her this time. She used the dagger to slash him out of her way, kept slashing until she had a hand on Manek, was near enough to see him struggling against the haphazard bonds that had been slapped around him. She used the dagger to cut the ropes, with just enough time to press it into his hand before she was wrenched away.

  Ennis yelped as hands, arms, bodies surrounded her in a crush. For a terrible moment, she was in Highcrest, at the foot of the Keep, bodies pushing, grabbing, groping at her, eclipsing everything, stealing all the air.

  Men shouted and grunted, and the occasional echo of metal meeting reached her even within the hive of Midlanders pressed around her. Ropes came around her wrists and elbows and a hand tried to stray down her dress. She drove that one away with snapping teeth.

  Someone jostled the mass surrounding her, and she tripped on her own feet, but the other bodies kept her upright.

  “Ennis!” she heard Manek scream, “Ennis!”

  She called his name, desperate to see, but shoulders and shields blocked her view. She kept screaming, screamed through the battle, screamed through them trying to gag her. She bit whatever hands were foolish enough to come near.

  “Dea’s tits,” hissed Larn from behind her.

  Ennis froze.

  He glared at her as he rubbed her teeth marks from the meaty part of his hand. Within the safety of the circle of his men, he looked her up and down, his eyes catching on the bare skin at the base of her neck, still a little lighter than the rest.

  “Ah,” he muttered, “things are starting to make more sense now.”

  With a snap, the circle moved forward, forcing Ennis along with it. They made it a few paces before stopping, and finally Ennis realized that the fighting had stopped; the meadow was quiet again.

  Two of Larn’s men parted, allowing him room to shove her just beyond them. He clamped a hand on her shoulder.

  Twenty paces away, Manek fought to be free of Taryn’s great arms, a frenzied look gleaming in his eyes. His men had managed to drag him back to the safety of the archers, but she knew from that look that he hadn’t gone willingly without her. The dagger she’d shoved into his hand was still clutched in his fist, bloody with use. Blood trickled from his nose and lip, but otherwise he looked unharmed.

  “This seems a bit of an impasse,” said Larn amiably, as if he’d come for a social visit.

  Manek lurched forward, wrath twisting his mouth into a snarl, but Taryn held fast. Beon moved to the other side to hold Manek too before he could make it more than two steps.

  “Such fire,” marveled Larn. “I didn’t think you were capable of it, to be honest.” His four-fingered hand moved from her shoulder up the curve of her neck in a terrible façade of a caress, his thumb lingering to rub circles on her skin along the line where the black slave ribbon had once been. “But perhaps you just needed a purpose all along. Is this the reason for all the trouble between us, Manek?”

  Holding her by the nape, Larn forced them another half-step forward.

  “I suppose this makes it easier, though. You for her.”

  Taryn and Beon huffed with the strength needed to hold Manek back; he pulled ag
ainst them, the tendons in his neck strung tighter than a bowstring.

  “Manek,” she called, waiting a moment to see what Larn would do. When he only chuckled to himself, Ennis called Manek’s name again. Clarity returned slowly to his eyes, the bloodlust cooling, retreating back behind the considering expression she was so used to. Manek blinked and looked at her, really looked at her.

  Now that she had his attention, Ennis said, “No, Manek. He’ll kill you, but torture you first, in front of Rising.”

  The Lowlanders hissed and Taryn and Beon clutched Manek tighter.

  “Well, well.” Larn’s grip hardened, his displeasure making his fingers tense, digging into her skin and bone, and her gave her a terrible shake by her neck. “And who told you that?”

  An outraged sound ripped from Manek’s throat, but Ennis smiled a terrible smile, turning slightly to show Larn all her teeth.

  “Adena Courtnay told me.”

  Larn let out an astonished huff, the hot air of it curling against her cheek. Ennis shuddered.

  “She disappeared,” said Larn.

  “She outwitted you. She used her life to thwart you, and so will I.” She met his gaze, no matter how her insides squirmed with fear to do it. “You should have sent us to our father when you had the chance.”

  “I’ve plenty of chances yet.” Larn looked across the empty, trampled meadow to Manek and smiled. “What will it be, Manek? Either I take you or I give her to my men.”

  “Let me go,” Manek growled.

  “No,” Taryn growled right back, absorbing a blow from Manek’s jostling shoulder.

  “I said let me—”

  “Manek, no!”

  “Hold him!”

  “Ennis—”

  Manek struggled against both men as more came up from the ranks to hold him fast. She saw the determination burning in him, the need to sacrifice himself.

  Ennis wriggled beneath Larn’s grip, trying to get free, knowing the only way to stop this was to take the choice away from Manek. He couldn’t let himself be taken; she wouldn’t let him. Larn gripped tighter and another man came up to help hold onto her. As she struggled against them and Manek fought his men, Larn stood there and laughed.