“No!” she yelled, and Raz could see her hands spasm into fists where she still stood just beyond Carro’s reach. “You’ve heard what he has to say! Raz will tell you as well! He had no choice!”
“There is always a choice,” Elber said firmly. “Had he taken the time to contemplate this, Carro would have seen this as well.”
“There are situations in which time is not a commodity one has in abundance,” Raz chimed in gravely. “There are occasions in which the swiftness of the decision is paramount.”
“There is no situation in which the most important factor to consider is not the upholding of the gift of life!” Elber retorted. “Had Carro taken the time, he would have found a way.”
“If I had taken the time, Talo would have left for the Lifegiver’s embrace knowing me as a man unable to grant him the mercy he had to beg me for.”
Carro, it seemed, had more fight left in him than his previous statement implied.
“Had I taken the time,” he said, his voice rising now as he looked to Elber, “then Raz and I might have lost the opportunity to reach you. Had I TAKEN THE TIME—” his voice raged, now “—THEN SYRAH MIGHT BE DEAD. HAD I TAKEN THE TIME, ANY HOPE OF ESCAPING THIS HELL THE KAYLE HAS PUT US IN MIGHT BE LOST!”
“There is ALWAYS ANOTHER WAY!” Elber howled back, going purple in the face. “You have betrayed the faith, Carro! The laws are clear!”
“I wonder how your laws will hold up for you when the choices Carro has had to make are set at your feet, rather than his,” Raz said calmly from behind the group.
The effect his words had was instantaneous. Every man and woman in the room froze, turning slowly to look at him. A few looked angry, some confused, but most had identical, stricken expressions.
As if Raz had just taken something horrible they all knew hovered, invisible above their heads, and shoved it under their noses…
“Arro,” Jofrey breathed warningly from beside him. “Ease into it…”
Raz blinked and turned to stare down at the man. The High Priest wasn’t looking at him, almost refusing to meet his eye.
All the same, by the way he stood by expectantly, Raz wondered suddenly if this wasn’t exactly what Jofrey had expected to happen.
Or planned… Raz thought, suddenly impressed.
“What is it?” the feeble, sickly voice of Jerrom Eyr, bent over beside Kallet Brern, spoke up. “What are you two whispering about? Explain yourself, Master Arro.”
Raz didn’t look away from Jofrey for a few seconds more, waiting to see if the High Priest would catch his eye, would give him some indication of what he wanted.
When the man did nothing, Raz decided to speak his mind.
“Syrah told me,” he started, looking back at the group, “that I wouldn’t be able to give you an impossible choice. She said you would insist there is another way, a better way, a way to resolve anything without death, without breaking your ‘law,’ as you call it.”
He paused, wondering if anyone would voice a disagreement, but no one spoke up.
“What would you say, though, if I proved you otherwise?”
“You won’t,” Behn Argo grumbled, sneering at Raz.
Raz nodded. “I thought that might be your response. And yet Talo once told me that ‘Until the day comes when He sees fit to end all wars, the Lifegiver is not unaware that violence will exist among His flock.’ Is this false? Is this an opinion not shared by the faith as a whole?”
“That’s different,” Kallet Brern said crossly, folding his muscled arms over his chest. “War is war. Even the Laorin cannot be expected to keep the peace everywhere, at all t—”
“You are at war, Priest,” Raz interrupted him coolly.
There was another pause.
“Stop your lies, creature,” Valaria Petrük spat out at last “We are a faith of peace, not conflict. We are as much at war as you are likely to throw yourself off a cliff.”
“If you don’t start listening, Valaria,” Carro barked from where he sat, “then it will be the death of you.”
“Is that a threat?” the woman demanded, giving him a sour look.
“Valaria,” Syrah interrupted the argument, speaking in a calm, solemn voice Raz would never have expected from her given the individual she was speaking to, “do you recall how many went down the path with me?”
At that Valaria Petrük hesitated. She seemed to sense something in the question, some trap.
Curiosity got the better of her, though, and she eventually answered.
“Ten. Why?”
“Do you know what happened to them?”
A low, dark grumbling started up among the group again, and Raz watched them turn to each other, muttering in what sounded like alarm.
Haven’t heard this part of the story yet…
“They were killed,” Petrük answered once the excitement had subsided somewhat. “Again, though, I ask, wh—?”
“And do you know how they were killed?”
This time, the alarm was palpable. Eyes went wide, hands clenched, and old Jerrom began a coughing fit he tried to stifle with a withered hand.
“They were butchered,” Syrah said before Valaria had the opportunity to respond. “I watched it happened, was in the middle of it. The Gähs fell on us from the cliffs above, cutting us down as we stood beneath a flag of truce. After that the Sigûrth charged, crushing those that were left beneath iron and steel. By the time I fell, what was left of those ten was nothing more than flesh and blood, corpses so ravaged that the snow turned red as it fell upon them.”
Syrah narrowed her eye at the old Priestess, who stood watching her in horrified silence. “Does that sound familiar?” she asked her. “Does that strike a chord with you, in any way? Do you recall, perhaps, what happened to Harond? To Metcaf? Do you remember what they did to the men living within? To the women? And the children?”
The old woman stiffened at this, taken by surprise.
Then she stuck her nose in the air. “I see no comparison,” she said haughtily. “Those were cities teaming with the faithless and blasphemers. You have no right to compare them to the likes of us, who live our lives in devotion to—”
“Those were a people the Kayle set himself against,” Syrah cut her off, her lips curling in anger. “They were victims of siege, of rape and murder and poisoning and torture. They were left to carnage, in the same way I was left to see what remained of the men and women who came down the pass with me. They were victims, trapped inside the shell of their walls, and I can’t help but wonder how long it took them to grasp the danger they were in.”
These last, final words, drove home. The point may have gone over Petrük’s stubborn head, but it seemed to strike others with the force of a lightning bolt. As he watched, Raz saw most of the faces before him grow suddenly still, comprehension sinking in. Whatever they might have thought their situation was, whatever delusion or denial they had been under, it was being rapidly swept away as they finally understood the truth of the situation.
“Laor’s mercy,” Kallet Brern muttered under his breath.
“You are at war,” Raz said again, his voice as harsh as the falling blade of an executioner’s ax.
XLVII
“What are we going to do?”
It was Aster Re’het, her head still swaddled in cloth and a crutch under one arm, who asked the question. It was a thought that had been hovering over them, omnipresent and frightening, suspended in the silence after Raz had spoken.
“We fight,” Cullen Brern said, his firm voice betrayed by a slight tremor in his hand. “If we don’t, we die.”
“Yes, but how?” Benala Forn asked, her wrinkled face pale. “It’s one thing to take on five-hundred. Even then we would be bottlenecked by the pass. If the rest of the Kayle’s army arrives—”
She was stopped abruptly, though, as Syrah cried out from her place beside Carro.
Raz snapped around to look at her, fearing something had happened. As it was, Syrah was merely gaping at Fo
rn over a hand now covering her mouth, looking as though she’d just had some terrifying realization.
“Syrah, what is it?” Carro demanded, looking her up and down. “What’s wrong? Are you hurting?”
Syrah shook her head.
“I-I’ve just remembered,” she moaned, starting to shake again. “Oh no. Oh no, no…”
She looked around slowly, and Raz could feel his own apprehension building up as she met his gaze.
“Grahst…” she began, seeming to be struggling to put everything together. “When he—before he…”
Raz understood why she was so shaken, then, putting two and two together. Grahst, it seemed, had been the man he had killed and ripped off of her. Raz waited, holding her gaze. He wanted to go to her, to take her in his arms and hold her again. He knew, though, that this would draw nothing good from the council, and he couldn’t take the risk of damaging whatever headway they’d managed to make.
And so he just waited, doing his best to silently tell her with his eyes that she had it in her to overcome the memory.
Shortly after, Syrah spoke again.
“Gûlraht Baoill will arrive today, if he hasn’t already.”
The sentence was barely out of her mouth before the council was in an uproar.
“WHAT?” Behn Argo demanded, furious.
“Syrah, are you sure?” Raz heard Carro ask her.
“How do you know this?” Priest Elber shouted over the noise.
“I-I was told,” Syrah answered this last question shakily. “I… I didn’t recall until now. I didn’t remember…”
“You ‘didn’t remember’?” Valaria Petrük nearly shrieked in disbelief. “You expect us to believe that? That you didn’t remember?”
At that, what little color she had left Syrah, and Raz saw in her face a hint of the horrified expression it had held as Reyn Hartlet reached for her in the bed. She seemed to crumple in on herself, her eye going wide, the fear there growing by the moment.
Raz decided it was time to intervene.
“Priestess Petrük,” he snapped, his every word laced with lethal assurance as his amber eyes fell on the hag of a woman, “I will say this once, and once only: believe her. Syrah has her reasons, none of which she should feel the need to share with the likes of you. More importantly—” Raz let a growl build up behind his words “—if you continue this line of questioning, you will shortly find yourself absent a tongue. And yes—” he dropped his arms to his sides, flexing the powerful limbs and spreading his clawed fingers in promise “—that is a threat.”
The air itself almost grew cold, as though Raz’s voice had drained the warmth from the room. No one spoke, all eyes on him as he stood, still staring at the old woman. The Priestess, for her part, appeared to have been struck utterly dumb, and just when Behn Argo looked to have found his voice, Kallet Brern stopped him with a hand, jerking his head towards the back of the room as though to soundlessly say “Don’t. Look.”
Argo did so, and Raz saw his face fall.
There, in the direction Brern had indicated, Syrah stood with her head bowed, her uneven hair falling in lopsided sheets to hide her face. She was shaking again, leaning with one shoulder against the wall of the cell and hugging herself with both arms. Raz felt his stomach bottom out as he saw her, and he didn’t notice as even Valaria Petrük—for perhaps the first time in years—looked suddenly heartbroken as each of the council members came to have some inkling of an understanding as to what, perhaps, the “reasons” Raz had just spoken of were.
“Go to her, Arro.”
The words reached Raz from what seemed to be a faraway place as he stood helplessly, watching at the woman. When he registered them, though, he stirred and turned his head.
Jofrey was still not looking at him, his blue eyes on Syrah now, but it was unmistakably he who had spoken.
“Go to her,” the High Priest said again, firmly this time.
Raz didn’t hesitate.
In four broad strides he was through the council, over the dusty floor, and in front of the Priestess. There he hesitated, towering above her as she shook, watching the quiver of her thin shoulders through her shirt.
Then he reached out, wrapped his long arms around her, and pulled her into his chest.
Syrah gasped when he first touched her, starting and making to pull away. When she realized it was him, though, she stopped fighting, stumbling into Raz and pressing herself against the hardened muscles of his trunk and torso. There were inhalations of surprise and outrage from behind Raz, but he ignored them all. As he pulled her in as tightly as he dared, still hugging herself as she buried her face into his shirt, he saw only Carro, sitting a little off to the left. The Priest had, until then, generally maintained the expression of concern and worry that had settled into his face when Syrah hadn’t moved to hug him, or at least reached out to touch him. He’d had questions, Raz could tell, and had perhaps been planning to ask them if the council left him in peace with the woman long enough to do so.
Now, however, by the distinct look of sad understanding overcoming the man’s bearded features, Raz thought most of those questions had been answered.
It wasn’t long before Syrah’s episode subsided. Her shaking ended within a few seconds, and in another ten she was breathing easy again. Eventually she lifted her head from Raz’s chest, looking up and pulling her arms from where they were pinned to rest her hands on each of his forearms.
“Thank you,” she said.
Raz nodded, then let her go. At once Syrah turned back to the council. Making neither comment nor apology regarding what had just happened, she continued as though they had never been interrupted.
“As I said—” she met everyone’s eyes steadily, now “—the Kayle is likely to arrive today. We should assume, therefore, that the rest of his forces will join the advance line, and prepare accordingly.”
There were a few grumblings at this. Some, Raz thought, were unsatisfied mutterings regarding what they had just witnessed, but fortunately the next question brought them around to the matter at hand.
“Prepare?” Aster Re’het asked faintly, taking a halting step forward on her crutch. “Prepare how? Baoill has tens of thousands at his disposal, Syrah. We have less than a handful of capable men and women in comparison. How do we prepare?”
“My fighters and I are ready and willing to do what is necessary,” Cullen Brern said resolutely from the front of the room. “Should it come to an attack, we will ensure as many escape as possible.”
“Escape to where?” Re’het asked shrilly, turning awkwardly to face to the man. “Where are we to run to? The mountains? The Woods? Most of us wouldn’t last a week in either place.”
“If the tribes don’t hunt us down first,” Benala Forn groaned. “Escape isn’t an option.”
“What other choice do we have?” Cullen Brern demanded, glaring at the women. “If the Kayle has indeed reunited with his vanguard, we’ve lost any small advantage we might have had with numbers. We can defend the pass, as discussed, but even if we manage not to be flanked from the cliffs our stores won’t last us more than the freeze, at which point we’re dead regardless. So—unless you two have some brilliant suggestion on how to convince Baoill to send away the greater part of his army again and meet us on an even playing field—I say again: we have no choice.”
Beside him, Raz felt Syrah stir suddenly, and he looked around.
The woman looked abruptly to have been pulled away, her mouth slightly open as she stared at Brern’s back. While the council started falling into disarray again, the Priests and Priestesses snapping at each other in annoyance and tempers born from fear, Raz gave the woman a minute or so before allowing curiosity to get the better of him.
“What is it?” he asked under his breath. “What are you thinking?”
Syrah didn’t respond immediately, and Raz could almost see the ideas coming together behind her blank gaze.
“There’s a way,” she told him finally, keeping her voi
ce low while the others continued to bicker. “At least… I think so.”
“A way to what? Escape?”
“No.” Syrah shook her head. “A way to force the Baoill to meet us on an even field, like Cullen said.”
Raz’s felt the skin along the back of his neck tingle as she said this. “What? How?”
Syrah was quiet for a few seconds more, looking for the words. Finally she reached up, grabbing Raz by the elbow and pulling him down as she stood on tiptoes.
“By cutting the head off the snake,” she whispered into his ear.
Then she told him her plan.
When she was done, Raz suddenly found that he, too, was staring off at nothing in particular. He considered her idea, contemplated its implications. It was a reach, but not too far a reach to be discounted outright. If there was even just a sliver of likelihood that Baoill could be so goaded… it might just give them a chance.
If I survive my part in it, Raz thought privately, though he didn’t tell Syrah this.
Instead, he glanced over at Carro, who was watching them—completely ignoring the arguing council members—with a combination of intrigue and suspicion.
“Do you think he would agree, though?” Raz asked Syrah. “Come to think of it, do you?”
At this, Syrah looked nervous. “I-I’m not sure. I…”
She paused, then took a breath and looked up at him. “I’ve… I’ve been struggling, Raz. It took losing Talo to shake Carro, and it took losing these—” she indicated her ear and the bandages covering what was left of her right eye—“and other things to shake me. If you can imagine another way, I would beg you to tell me. But if my only options come down to the death of fewer over the death of more… then the answer is easy to make, if difficult to swallow.”
The words rang familiar to Raz, and after a moment he couldn’t help but smile despite the morbidity of the conversation. “Talo told me something similar, once,” he said to Syrah in reply to her inquisitive look. “Very similar, in fact. I don’t know if he would be proud of you, given the nature of the situation, but I can tell you he would have made the same choice in your place.”
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