The Killing Light

by Myke Cole

  His knights looked nervous at Heloise’s approach, but they kept their lances up, reining their horses back to let her come close. “Heloise Factor”—Steven jerked his thumb at the gray sky—“this is an unpleasant turn. Snow is a rare thing on the Gold Coast. How are your people faring in it?”

  “They can’t keep up,” Heloise said. “They brought their families. Children and graybeards. Some are falling behind.”

  Steven frowned. “An army on the march is no place for children and graybeards. They should go home and sit by their fires. We will make the valley safe for them once we have taught the Order a lesson.”

  “If they go, their fathers and brothers and sons will go too.”

  Steven looked past her at the line of wagons and people, straggling and tangled. “This is the problem when an army marches by its faith, rather than its will. War is the work of captains, not saints.”

  “I never said I was a saint.”

  “Heloise, the armored saint.” Steven smiled.

  “That is what you say,” Heloise said. Sir Steven was a powerful man, with an army behind him. Heloise didn’t like disagreeing with him, but she couldn’t let his words stand any more than she could Barnard’s. All these friends, always testing me.

  “And if you think I am the only one, you are fool and saint both. At this pace, we will reach the capital in four days. Your people will have to find a way to keep up. Four days is not so long a march.”

  “Why can’t we go slower?”

  “Because even now, word of our victory at Lyse is making its way north. Once it does, the Imperials will dispatch their army to meet us before we reach the city.”

  “We just beat their army.”

  Sir Steven looked at her like the child she felt she was. “Heloise, this is the Empire. Did you think you’d beaten every fighting man they have?”

  Stupid. Steven was a war leader. She knew she couldn’t match his experience, but someone had to speak for her people. Whether she wanted it or no, it was her. “What difference does it make if we fight them in the field or at the capital?”

  “Because, Heloise, the Imperial army are riders. Their strength is in their Order and their knights. Horsemen all. If we bottle them up in a city, they are near useless. If we face them in the field … I will admit I do not like our chances.”

  “We already beat their knights and the Order at Lyse.”

  “We beat them,” Sir Steven said, “when they were surprised, Heloise. We beat them after their knights and their Pilgrims both were exhausted by assaulting the walls. Facing them fresh, mounted, and in a field battle is another matter entirely. We must reach the capital before they have a chance to deploy.”

  Heloise looked back over at her column. Sir Steven could have been lying to her, she had no way to know. But while she couldn’t tell the truth of his words, she could see the truth of her own people, shivering, stumbling, desperate to keep up with the pace of the Red Lords’ troops. “We have to do something. They can’t go on like this.”

  Sir Steven threw up his hands. “What would you have of me, Heloise Factor?”

  “Let the children and the old ones ride in your carts. You said yourself it’s just for four days.”

  “Urchins and beggars to plunder my stores? My carts are for supply, not for carrying children.”

  Heloise’s stomach tightened as she met Sir Steven’s eyes. What if she angered him and he left her behind? No. If I don’t stand up for them, no one will. “You told me we could march with you, and you would care for us as long as it took us to reach the capital. Did you mean it?”

  Steven exchanged a look with one of his captains and then let out a long sigh. “You will not rest until I regret those words.”

  “I will not rest until you do what you said you would. And my people will fight. We may not be so many as you, but you saw us at Lyse. We’re not cowards.”

  “I hope you are right, Heloise,” Steven said. “Very well, I will tell my baggage master to take on your stragglers, but you will answer if they loot my stores. And I know I can rely on you to remember the kindness the Free Peoples have shown to yours when the time comes.”

  Heloise bridled at his tone, but she swallowed her anger. “Thank you, Sir Steven. And … I wanted to ask you a question.”

  Sir Steven folded his arms across his chest. “Yes?”

  “When we beat the Order, what will you do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Will you leave? Will you stay and try to rule us?”

  Sir Steven held her gaze in silence, and then finally broke into a smile, spreading his hands. “My charge, Heloise, is to ensure the Empire never threatens my people again. When we have broken their army, I will leave observers and advisers in your court and take my army back to the Gold Coast. You have my word on that.”

  He is lying. Heloise thought of Sigir, of the love in his eyes, his sad words as he plunged the knife into her. Men do what they want when they are in charge, and they tell themselves it’s right.

  She was almost grateful when Xilyka interrupted them, pointing back over the long train of the army. “What is that?”

  Heloise squinted. The snow had stopped falling, but the wind whipped what remained about so fiercely that it settled in the army’s tracks, covering all trace of their passage. “I see nothing.”

  “Look harder, Heloise,” Xilyka said, “on the horizon. Back by Lyse.”

  And now Heloise could see it, a thin green cast to the light, a sick shade, the color of pond slime or a toad’s skin. It shimmered far in the distance. “What … what is that?”

  But she spoke the words as a reflex. Her mind was screaming at her, the color of the wavering glow was too familiar. She’d seen light like this before, ripping through the fissure in her old friend Clodio as his body split and the devil emerged, screaming, into the sunlit world. But this couldn’t be the same, could it? It was so … vast, lighting the whole horizon over Lyse. Perhaps it was some trick of the snow, and her fear was turning shadows into monsters.

  “I have never seen a light like that,” Sir Steven said, shading his eyes. His captains followed his gaze, and she could hear them whispering to one another, fear plain in their voices.

  “I…” Heloise began, “I think I have.”

  Sir Steven turned to her. “What?”

  “When … when my friend … when the devil came out of him.”

  “What you call wizardry, no doubt,” Xilyka said. “Perhaps something to do with what the Order did when they took down the wall.”

  Heloise felt her stomach turn over. She had deliberately not told Sir Steven of the Order’s use of wizards to break the walls of Lyse, but she couldn’t order the Traveling People to do the same.

  “Wizardry?” Sir Steven was as shocked as his captains. “What wizardry?”

  There was no point in trying to keep it from him now. “The Order had three wizards,” Heloise said, “as prisoners. They forced them to use their power to take down the wall. You arrived just after.”

  Sir Steven looked at Heloise over steepled fingers. “And why, pray tell, did you keep this from us?”

  Heloise faced him. This man is not my lord. “Because I didn’t know if you think of wizardry as the Order does. If you did, you would have killed us all. And because you saw the wall. You could see the rot. What did you think happened to it?”

  “We thought it a ruin,” Sir Steven said, “and this is another mark in your ledger with us, Heloise. You have kept information from me. You ride my horses. You ask to place your weakest with my baggage and put upon me for provisions for the rest. Your debt to the Free Peoples grows greater with each passing day.”

  “I don’t owe you anything.” Heloise struggled to keep her voice even. “You said you would help us to thank us for helping you to surprise the Empire’s army. You said we would work together.”

  “And what work have you done so far? Let this be the first work you do—send a rear guard down the road. I will provid
e you with fast horses. Ride back and find out what … that is.”

  “Ride back?” Heloise asked. “The capital is the other way.”

  “Aye,” Sir Steven said, “and when you have had more time in command of an army, you will know that no war leader leaves an enemy unchecked to his rear.”

  “How do you know it’s an enemy?” Heloise asked.

  “You say that’s the light you saw when your so-called devil came forth.”

  “Yes, but this is much bigger … maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s not an enemy.”

  Sir Steven looked back to the greasy smudge of light wavering on the horizon. The snow had begun falling again, looking gray where it passed before the light.

  “Whatever it is,” he said, “it is not a friend.”

  2

  COUNCIL

  Captain-General held a nightly council. Gathered us all together in his tent, big as a palace. Well, the serjeants, at least, with the men all huddled together outside the flaps, pretending they could hear. Built a great fire in the middle, and said that any man could come before it and speak plain without fear of punishment. Said the council fire was an ancient tradition going back before the Emperor closed the veil. But we saw the Pilgrims standing beside him, flails in their hands, eyes daring us to test the limits of tradition. I held my peace, and so did every other man.

  —From the journal of Samson Factor

  “You cannot go,” her father said. Heloise could see him almost adding I forbid it, but he stopped himself. The last time he’d tried to command her, Barnard had knocked him in the dirt.

  Samson fumbled for a moment, and then his eyes lit. “These people follow you, Heloise. They won’t march if they don’t see you at the front of the column.”

  “He’s right in that, your eminence,” Barnard said. “We cannot spare you.”

  Samson’s argument made her sick with both anger and love. You don’t care about the march. You just want to protect me. She was furious that he undermined her command, but warmed by the knowledge that there was someone in the world who saw her as something other than a saint.

  “Don’t see why he can’t send his own riders,” Samson said. “He’s got more than enough men.”

  “He gave us food, clothing, tents, horses,” Heloise said. “He took our people on his wagons like I asked. We have to do something too. Isn’t that what you always taught me, Father? That good people repay their debts?”

  “Still…” her father muttered.

  “There … it just looks like the light that came from Clodio,” Heloise said. “What if there is a devil? I am the only one who can fight it.”

  “All the more reason you shouldn’t go,” Samson said. “I’ll not see you pick a fight with a devil.”

  “Who will fight it then? You?”

  “That’s not the point. It’s … it’s as I said. You’re needed here.”

  “I will go in your place, your eminence.” Barnard’s son Guntar broke the tense silence. He was the spitting image of his father. Nearly as big, his shaven head gone to stubble over the long march. His beard was patchy and matted, but Heloise could see the beginnings of the fine red thatching he would share with his father someday. His brother, Gunnar, had been much the same, before Brother Tone had killed him. “If there’s a devil, we won’t run afoul of it. Just spy it, then ride back quick as we can to summon the army.”

  “You’re no horseman,” Barnard said.

  “None of us are,” Guntar replied, “but you are at the Palantine’s side every step of the way, while I am in the column with Mother. I am nearly a man grown, Father. I have fought the Order at your side. Let me do this.”

  “I have lost one son already,” Barnard said. “I will not lose another.”

  “Look around you.” Guntar waved an arm to take in the columns. “We are an army marching to war, Father. There is nothing but danger all about us. You cannot keep me safe, but you can let me work the Emperor’s will. We labor in Heloise’s cause, and that cause is holy. No harm will come to me.”

  Heloise could see the pain in Guntar’s face. He has no task to take him from his grief. Heloise had the command of her troops to keep her mind from the loss of her mother. Guntar had only leagues of walking and endless time to brood. “You promise you will only look, then ride straight back to us as fast as you can?”

  Guntar nodded so quickly his chin nearly tapped his throat.

  “Let him go, Barnard,” Heloise said, ashamed of her relief. If there was a devil in the world again, she had no wish to see it.

  The huge tinker raised his eyes to her, sputtering. “Your eminence, you cannot…”

  “Good!” Samson folded his arms across his chest. “I’m pleased you’ll listen to sense.”

  Her father’s smug words made the anger surge so hot that Heloise’s scalp burned. She locked eyes with her father, but spoke to Barnard. “I won’t ask your family to do something mine won’t do. My father will go with him.”

  Barnard stopped his sputtering, his eyebrows rising. “Your eminence?”

  “Heloise,” Samson said, “I am no rider.”

  “Didn’t you hear Guntar, Father? None of us are.”

  “My place is with you.”

  “I am in a war-machine, with an army. Onas and Xilyka are great fighters. I am safe enough.”

  “Still.” Samson looked stricken. “I don’t like leaving you.”

  Heloise regretted the words as soon as they tumbled out of her mouth. “I am not your little girl anymore, Father.”

  “Come, Samson.” Guntar clapped his shoulder, breaking the tense silence that followed. “I will be glad of your counsel.”

  “Take another,” Heloise said.

  Guntar turned to Xilyka. “Do you think the Traveling People will spare one of their own to help?”

  Heloise’s heart warmed that Guntar would even ask a “heretic,” and Xilyka smiled. “I cannot speak for the Mothers, but you lose nothing by asking.”

  “Good,” Heloise said, not wanting to give time for either Barnard or her father to protest. “Get your people and horses. Stick to the road so you can find us again. Sir Steven will not slow the army for anything. He says we have to reach the capital in four days or the Order will beat us in the field.”

  “No matter how fast you march, you are on foot mostly. We will all be mounted. We’ll catch you up, don’t worry!” Guntar beamed. “Thank you, your eminence!” And then he was off, running down the column toward the Traveling Peoples’ wagons. Samson held Heloise’s eyes for what felt like an eternity before turning his horse to follow.

  “Are you all right, Heloise?” Xilyka asked.

  “I’m fine,” Heloise said. “I can’t have him trying to hold my hand all the time. I’m supposed to be a leader. It’s better this way.”

  “Better.” Xilyka didn’t sound convinced.

  “Yes.”

  “Then why,” the Hapti girl asked, “do you look like you just drank a pail of sour milk?”

  * * *

  Samson set out a quarter-candle later, with little more than a sad look and a grunt of “We should be able to make it back by nightfall.” He rode out on one of Sir Steven’s fine chargers, a broad-shouldered animal that Heloise could tell would eat up the road despite the snow. With him rode Guntar and a Sindi knife-dancer. Heloise watched her father bouncing awkwardly in the saddle as he shrank in her vision, felt a surge of love for him.

  “Well,” Xilyka asked, “are you glad he is gone?”

  “I am,” Heloise said, “and I miss him. It’s … it’s like being two people at the same time.”

  She winced as she spoke, worried Xilyka would think her childish, but the Hapti girl only nodded knowingly. “It is always thus with love.”

  “What if there is a devil? What if he’s hurt?”

  Xilyka didn’t answer, and after a while Heloise said, “I only sent him because he made me angry. Because he was treating me like a little girl. I … Maybe I shouldn’t have.”

&
nbsp; Xilyka shrugged. “Do you remember what my mother did on the wall of Lyse?”

  “Her … talent. She saved us.”

  Xilyka shrugged again. “She swung the battle for a time, at least, yes. Just that morning I yelled at her for making me repeat myself. She … she doesn’t hear as she used to.”

  Heloise looked down at her. Xilyka’s eyes were on the snow, her hands making useless circles at her sides. “I told her she was old.”

  “She … she is old. We all get short with our parents sometimes, Xilyka. It doesn’t make you bad.”

  Xilyka shook her head. “It was unkind. And then that very afternoon, she … did what she did on the wall. It was the Wheel, turning up a lesson.”

  “What lesson?”

  “To have faith in our own. Even when they seem weak. Especially when they seem weak.”

  Heloise looked up again. Even through the blinding snow, she could still faintly make out the sick shimmer of the strange light. Her father’s figure dwindled slowly toward it, until finally the gale swallowed him.

  It was well before nightfall when the snow finally forced a halt. Heloise kept thinking the driving wind might finally break, but the gusts came closer and closer together, until they ran into a single gale that whipped the powder into whirling white funnels that blotted out the sun, leaving the column in a gray-white haze. The horses stumbled, unable to pick their footing in the thick drifts.

  Mother Leahlabel, Onas’s mother and one of the leaders of the Sindi band, at last ordered her wagons drawn into a line across the road. The Sindi set to piling snow beneath them, until at last they formed a wall that shielded them against the worst of the wind. The column huddled up as close to the wagon-wall as they could, shivering miserably against one another. A few tried to light fires, but gave up as the wind and the soaking snow fought a winning campaign against them.