"A harsh place," Arrow's father always said. "Harsh, and if you didn't look over your shoulder, you might find an enemy behind you at any time, at every turn." When Arrow was a child he would ask about that, what his father meant. It was only later that he understood that Creed had realized during his time in the Strongholds how corrupt the Empire had become. That that was when he decided to help those in need.
That the Strongholds had sent him on the path that would end with him being murdered by – of all people – Sword.
Arrow had never been here. But he had heard the stories. And what he saw now looked nothing like what his father had described.
The Strongholds Arrow's father had described was a hive of activity. Thousands of men and women training at all hours, groups leaving – dispatched to parts of the Empire where force was needed. People coming – returning from successful missions.
Now, though….
All was silent. All was dark.
Arrow's vision was beyond the understanding of others. The darkness around the auto-car was no hindrance. But as he looked, he realized he could barely see beyond the illumination provided by the auto-car.
He felt suddenly cold inside. Like part of his Gift had deserted him – though he knew that wasn't so. He could feel it, there inside him. But at the same time, it felt… muffled.
"Something's wrong," whispered Colonel Alya.
Arrow nodded, and drew the auto-car to a halt. Past the first spire of the Strongholds stood a wall. Not like the palace – this one was low to the ground, a token structure meant more to give final warning than to keep out intruders. In the known history of the Empire, no force had ever attacked the Strongholds – why would they, knowing that the strength of the Army stood there? There were many, faster ways to commit suicide than standing against the greatest fighting force in the known world.
No, the wall was simply a signal, a statement. You enter our world now, it said. And that was quite enough.
Still, though it wasn't a defensible wall, there should have been people. Forget the ones that should have been going and coming through the long gate that split its length, there should have been sentries on the wall, people walking guard.
Colonel Alya was looking behind, at the stone spire they had just passed. "There should have been a warning the second we passed the spire," she said. "The protocols demand –" She fell silent without finishing, turning to face forward again.
"There are wall guards, too, right?" Arrow already knew the answer, but he wanted verification. As though having someone else agree that things were wrong might somehow act to remove the wrongness.
"There certainly should be."
He slowed to a crawl. The darkness was oppressive, and the further they drove, the thicker it seemed.
"Do you see that?" he finally asked.
"What?"
"The dark."
Colonel Alya didn't crack the slightest smile. "It's night."
"No, there's more than that…." He shook his head. Didn't continue speaking. He couldn't really describe it to himself, let alone to someone else. The pressure behind his eyes, the feeling that something was pushing against him, that the darkness around them was more than just an absence of light. It had weight, feeling.
It had malice.
They drew even with the wall. Beyond it, Arrow could make out dozens of structures – stables, garages, smithies, command buildings, fields where training could occur, barracks. But he saw them all dimly. The darkness would not permit him any kind of detail.
And one thing he definitely did not see: any movement at all.
"Stop." Arrow jerked the auto-car to a halt, but Colonel Alya was already out the door before she finished the word. Arrow got out as well, running with her to the wall.
"What is –" But he saw. He knew.
Blood.
A wide red smear colored the gray stone of the wall beside the gate. And now that he was close enough, Arrow could see that there were holes in the stone, too: someone had been shot to death here.
He looked down the line of the wall. Ran a few steps down. Came to another smear of blood. No holes in the wall, no other clues as to what had happened. Only enough blood that it was certain whoever had been attacked had also died right here.
"What is this?" whispered Colonel Alya.
Arrow jumped. She had crept up behind him without a sound, and now stared at the second patch of blood.
"I don't know," he said. He leaned down to look closer at the blood –
(I shouldn't have to get closer. I should see it all. What's going on?)
– and dabbed at it with his finger.
"What are you doing?"
He showed her. The blood was dark, small crusts beginning to form. "This happened at least a few hours ago. The blood's starting to congeal."
Colonel Alya turned toward the darkness within the Stronghold, began running.
"Wait!" When she didn't stop, Arrow ran as well. Not after her, but to the auto-car. He didn't know what was happening here, but he didn't intend to leave the vehicle that could carry them out of here the fastest.
He got in and began driving. He saw Colonel Alya ahead, and quickly caught up with her, rolling down the window and shouting, "Stop!"
She ignored him. Just ran, faster and faster. She wasn't trying to get away from him – just ignoring him. Not even seeming to see him. Or to see the splotches of red that Arrow now noticed on the ground every few feet, or the crimson streaks painting the walls of the buildings they passed.
They sped by the garages. Big doors – not just for holding auto-cars, he realized, but probably for the larger weapons the Army had at their disposal. The flying things designed just months ago – things they called "tanks," which flew faster than an air-car, and could fire huge explosive shells from gun-like turrets mounted on them.
The doors were opened. Some of the auto-cars and a few tanks were there – smoking and destroyed. Most of them were gone.
Blood was everywhere.
Arrow looked away from the sight in time to see Colonel Alya veer off, finally entering a building – one of the barracks. He stopped the auto-car and ran after her. He didn't like leaving the auto-car, but he liked leaving Colonel Alya alone even less.
He pounded toward the barracks. A light rain began to fall, droplets touching him in the heavy darkness. He realized he had a gun in one hand, his small crossbow in the other. He held both so tightly his palms and fingers ached, and forced himself to loosen up – hard to shoot if you can't even make your fingers pull the triggers.
Then he was inside.
Dark. A few glo-globes hung from sconces along the entry room, but they had all been broken – shattered spheres with dark fluid smeared across most of them. If it weren't for the lightning that began to flash through the windows, he wouldn't have been able to make out much of anything.
Colonel Alya wasn't in here.
"Colonel?" The shout ricocheted around the room, and as it did he noticed what a mess it was. Not just blood, but the furnishings had been destroyed. Bullet holes in one wall, a trio of arrows in another.
Colonel Alya didn't answer.
There were two doors leading out of the room, deeper into the barracks. He called for Colonel Alya again, but heard nothing. He picked the door to the right – mostly because it was close to the wall with the arrows in it, and he wanted to look at them.
He did. Wished he hadn't. The arrows sunk deep into the wall, but all three of them were painted up and down with sticky red. Two of them had bits of flesh attached: meat they had pulled with them after punching completely through someone.
Arrow shuddered, and continued through the door.
A hall beyond. Even darker. Lightning flashing just enough to illuminate one step at a time. He heard his breathing, felt his pulse slamming through him from his toes to the tips of his ears.
The flickering light let him see nearly nothing, but far too much.
Broken walls.
P
apers scattered.
Blood. Everywhere, blood.
He heard a sound. A soft scrape that drew his attention to a doorway just ahead. A door hung from a single hinge, askew as though grown drunk on the blood all about. Arrow moved carefully around it, keeping his crossbow pointed down the hall while pointing his gun into the room.
Dark.
All dark. That strange, heavy dark.
The lightning flashed.
Arrow screamed and almost loosed a shot.
The lightning illuminated a huddled form, crouched on the floor. Holding what looked at first like a body without head or arms or legs. Looking like a creature from the Netherworlds come not just to kill, but to take – body and soul.
The lightning flickered out, then flashed again. And now he saw what it was. What his body had already known, and the reason he hadn't shot it.
Not a monster. Not a monster.
Just Colonel Alya. And she's not holding a body. Just….
"His pillow." The words were laden with suffering, sounding almost like tears even though the colonel's face was dry. She clutched the red-soaked lump of hay-stuffed fabric closer to herself. Arrow could hear it crinkle. It sounded like tiny bones being shattered.
He didn't speak for a moment. The lightning kept flashing, and now the rain that had only threatened fell in earnest – he could hear it hammering against the ceiling of the barracks.
He wondered if it would wash away all the blood.
Never. Nothing could.
Colonel Alya looked up at him. Her face, already angular, seemed to sharpen to a knife edge. Her mouth all but disappeared, a bloodless slit slashed through a bone-white face. Then she bowed her head and pushed her face at the bloody pillow, cradling it with every part of her. When she lifted her face, it was painted as well – blood over her cheeks, her lips. Only the hollows of her eyes remained white.
She looked like a bloody skull. Arrow shivered.
"What happened here?" he asked.
He didn't expect an answer, but Colonel Alya said, "Something killed them all." She looked at the pillow, tracing it with red fingers. "Someone killed my boy."
Arrow swallowed. He almost said, "I'm sorry," but forced himself not to. He saw paths and courses – that was his Gift. And he knew that no words would help her, no kindness would soothe. She would do best in the silence.
It was the right choice. The lightning blinked on and off, creating strange shadows that writhed across the bloody walls. Arrow didn't move from where he stood, but he looked around the room. It was the main barracks room – racks of bunks lining a long space on both sides. Probably room for thirty or more soldiers.
This was the kind of space that new fighters slept. Until they had earned promotion, and were moved to better quarters.
Every bed was bloody.
Arrow looked back at the colonel, and now he spoke. "When did your son join?"
She didn't answer for a moment. Then, suddenly, as though willing herself to move because she knew that to remain would be to die, she stood and dropped the pillow at her feet.
She looked around as well, seeming to see the rest of the room for the first time. "He entered the Emperor's service three months ago." Her voice was empty, nearly toneless. But it did not shake, there was no trembling in her words.
She is strong.
Now Arrow said the words. "I am sorry."
She nodded. "As am I." Now some emotion crept into her voice: cold fury as she added, "As will be whoever did this."
She stepped away from her son's bed. Her feet crackled as she walked, and Arrow realized with dread that there was so much blood on the floor it had literally stuck to her boots.
The colonel didn't seem to notice at all. She just moved along the bunks, searching for something. Finally she grunted, bent over, and when she came up something glowed in her hand. She had found a glo-torch, the small stick with a glo-globe embedded in one end of it, and a switch that would activate a shutter to cover the light so it would not be seen unless the carrier wished to use it.
The light illuminated everything in a clear, white tone. Arrow was both happy for the continuous light and distressed at what it so clearly showed.
Colonel Alya, again, barely seemed to note the gore that covered nearly every surface in the room. She just swung the torch from side to side, looking around with an expression as neutral as if she were appraising a patch of farmland for taxing.
"Have you ever seen anything like this?" Arrow barely managed the words. He had seen death, destruction. But not like this. Nothing – not even the sight of the murdered Ears – had matched what lay around him.
"No." Colonel Alya glanced at him. "You going to be all right?"
He nodded. Sucked in a gasp of air. Clean, head-clearing. But he still sensed that strange blackness all around, pressing at him, pushing at his Gift.
What is that? It has to be related to what happened here, but how?
"What now?"
Arrow was surprised to hear the colonel ask the question. He nearly answered, "You're the colonel, you tell me." But in that instant he knew that would only draw a rebuke from her. He was a noble. He was the Lord of the Southern Grasslands, on a mission from the Emperor. He was in charge, and she was clearly a soldier, through and through: she would not let him defer to her. He was the leader, so lead he must.
He looked around. "Where are the bodies?" he whispered.
Again, he didn't expect an answer. Again, she gave one. "Gone, Lord." Her words had become formal, as well: she was hiding from her shock and terror behind a wall of procedure and rules. "But that is not the question we should be asking, if I may be so bold."
"Don't rest on formality, Colonel. What are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking that we don't need to know where the bodies are, so much as who could do something like this. And why."
Arrow nodded, then turned to leave. Colonel Alya followed him without a word, only looking back at the bed where her son had slept for the shortest instant.
They went back to the front room.
The world was a thing of moments, of intersections occurring at varying speeds.
And I understand them. Where things come from. Where they are going. How to shoot a weapon and –
He had closed his eyes for a moment as he thought. Now they snapped open and he turned to look at the three arrows on the wall. The grouping and the angles told a story. He read the story, and then turned.
"Do you see something, Lord?" asked Colonel Alya. Her voice sounded a bit more alive. Hoping for him to find something that would let her avenge what had happened.
"The arrows were all Army-issued. Standard for a longbow. Shot by three different people, nearly in the same instant." He pointed at three different spots in the room. "From there, there, and there."
"Whoever did this was well-trained, then." She shrugged. "But that was already obvious. They would have to be well-trained, to destroy the Strongholds so completely, to kill everyone in them without a single person escaping to give the warning to the rest of us. I just reported to the skybridge yesterday, and before that I was here. So whatever happened, it happened in a matter of hours." She shook her head. "I don't see how that's possible."
"Not hours." Arrow moved between the three spots where the arrow shots had to have come from.
"What?"
"Minutes." He knelt at each spot. There was a wide swatch of blood at each point of origin. Two of them had long streaks coming off the main patch of red. The other had a series of smaller patches leading to the first. Then a boot-print in the middle of the blood.
"What do you mean, minutes?" Colonel Alya shook her head. "That's… that's not possible."
Arrow barely heard her. He moved to another spot in the room.
No. No. Not this, no. Anything but this.
He found another splash of red – this time against the wall. Almost none on the floor. His gut turned.
No.
"This was where the bullets were
fired." He wasn't talking to Colonel Alya. Not really. He was speaking to keep from screaming.
No. NO!
(Moments. Intersections. Paths.)
He moved away from the spot, turning to see what he already knew would be there: a broken window.
He ran out of the barracks. The rain lashed his face, water saturating his hair and coursing down forehead, cheeks, chin, neck.
He ran faster. The blood would wash away. And he needed the blood to know.
You already know.
No. Perhaps not. Perhaps –
You KNOW.
Colonel Alya followed him as he ran from place to place, using the torch to illuminate his path as he ran. She didn't speak, clearly not understanding what was happening, but just as clearly knowing it was something important. Critical.
Arrow ran through the Strongholds. They were massive, and he didn't know if he would be able to follow what happened far enough back.
The paths are disappearing. The intersections fading.
Lightning glared, blinding him. The darkness loomed, suffocating him. And the fear he felt made him want to crawl away.
He thought of Sword. What she would do if she were here.
She wouldn't give up. Wouldn't stop. And she wouldn't believe I would, either.
He forced himself onward, moving from path to path, intersection to intersection. Trying to live up to what Sword thought of him; to be as brave and good as she constantly told him he was.
I'm not who she thinks I am.
Not as good.
Just me.
His thoughts grew quiet. The sounds of rain and thunder and boots in mud disappeared.
Just me… will have to be enough.
He knelt.
They were back at the gate that split the long, low wall around the Strongholds. Back at the first patch of blood that they had seen.
Child of Sorrows Page 28
