Stars and Graves

by Roberto Calas

“It’s a friend a yours,” called Shanks.

  Lokk set the oiled rag down. The leather was wet so he left the theiyras on his haypad, walked the ten steps to the southern edge of the camp, rubbing the oil from his hands.

  A maurg, dressed in the livery of House Cobblethrie, staggered in the thicket. The creature had only one foot.

  “It’s the one from the rocks,” said Drissdie. “The Eridian.”

  “There’s some advice for you, boys!” laughed Shanks. “If your innards are half out your gut, don’t walk through prickers.”

  The man’s intestines were strung among the vines like garland. The long thorns had tugged them out from the gash in his stomach as he walked. The Eridian’s face was bloated, the skin thick and baggy, the features swollen beyond recognition. He clutched at the entrails and tried to move, but the thorns would not relent. He groaned piteously and doubled over, then his emerald gaze found the three soldiers. He hissed at them showing black, broken teeth, and lunged forward. The thorns held tightly, and he cried out once more.

  Lokk walked to the brambles drawing his dagger but was driven back by the terrible thorns. He looked back toward camp. The brig had gone into his tent to sleep. Hammer was snoring just outside.

  “Get Meedryk,” he called to Drissdie. “And the archer.”

  Drissdie called Meedryk over and ran back to Aramaesia. She sat with Ulrean at the far end of camp digging bugs out of the rampart wall. “Maid Aramaesia, come quick! And bring your bow.” He looked at Ulrean, then whispered too loudly, “You might not want to bring the boy.”

  Aramaesia carried Ulrean back to her haypad. “I’ll be right over there,” she said, pointing at the men standing outside the rampart wall. “I’m not going away, Sparrow. Just wait here for one moment.”

  Ulrean nodded, but looked toward the men curiously. Aramaesia clutched her unstrung bow and hung the belt and quiver over one shoulder. Ulrean watched her go.

  Then he noticed Lokk’s glistening scabbards and the theiyras inside.

  †††

  Aramaesia said a brief prayer when she saw the creature.

  “Fucking arse nipples,” Meedryk whispered.

  “Can you two make a flaming arrow?” asked Lokk.

  Meedryk nodded. “That’s… that’s orphist stuff. Very basic. But the flame won’t last long.”

  “Do it,” said Lokk. “If she hits the eye it won’t have to last long.”

  Aramaesia held one of her arrows up to the mage and he made motions over the steel broadhead. “Suhira Sevalia.”

  The tip flared with an intense blue flame that crackled on the metal. The archer took careful aim, whispered to herself, then fired. The arrow carved a bright trail toward the Eridian, grazed the bridge of his nose and sank into the pit of his eye. The searing arrow head sizzled in the brain until the creature toppled. His body never fell. It only leaned, lifeless, against the thick vines.

  “Be nice to get in there,” said Shanks. “He’s got some fine bracers.”

  They walked back into camp, then halted as one.

  Ulrean had dragged himself to Lokk’s bedroll, and had one of the theiyras out of its scabbard. The boy was running his fingers along the elaborate carvings that crisscrossed the metal.

  Shanks chuckled. “This is gonna be fun.”

  Lokk drew back his lips and made a rasping sound, his hands balled into fists.

  “Lokk, no!” shouted Aramaesia. “He doesn’t know. He was asleep when you spoke of them! He doesn’t mean anything… he’s a child! Lokk!”

  The Eridian glared at the boy then turned on his heel and stalked into the forest.

  Shanks frowned. “That wasn’t near as entertaining as I expected.”

  A flurry of squawks and screeches rose from behind them, then Lokk was back, stomping toward Ulrean with one of the fat jurren birds in his hands. The creature dangled by its feet, fluttering wildly and screeching. Aramaesia stood in front of Ulrean but Lokk reached past her and grabbed the boy’s arm.

  “Leave him be!” Aramaesia screamed.

  Lokk pulled the boy forward and knelt. He let go of the child’s arm and picked up the unsheathed theiyra, held the weapon and the fluttering, screeching bird in front of the boy’s face.

  “Kill it,” he said icily.

  “Leave him be!” Aramaesia shrieked. She grabbed Lokk by the neck and pulled but the Eridian didn’t budge.

  “Kill it,” he repeated. The boy’s eyes were plates, tears streaming down the familiar channels.

  “I won’t!” he cried, his fear tinged with anger. “Let go of me! I command it!”

  “Easy to give orders, ain’t it?” said Lokk. “You draw a sword, you prepare for what comes of it. The son of a duke’s gotta learn that.” He uncurled one finger from the bird’s feet and hooked the finger into the boy’s tunic. Ulrean tried to break free, but the one finger was enough to lock him in place.

  Aramaesia scratched at Lokk’s neck with her nails, drawing blood. “Grae! Hammer! Sage! Help!”

  Lokk lifted two fingers from the hilt of his sword and grabbed the boy’s wrist with them. He pulled the Ulrean’s hand forward onto the grip. Then he sliced downward with the blade, sawing through the bird’s neck. Blood spurted from the shrieking bird, spattering both Lokk and Ulrean. The head dangled for an instant before Lokk twisted his wrist and severed it completely. Ulrean sobbed. The creature’s wings continued to flutter madly. Blood gushed onto boy and warrior. Ulrean yanked and strained and tears fired from his eyes. Lokk released him with a shove.

  Grae sprinted from the officer’s tent, with Hammer and Sage a step behind. They all held swords and tried to blink the sleep from their eyes.

  “What ...what in Mundaaith’s Bullocks is going on here?” Hammer shouted. “Can’t we leave you alone for ten beats without you tearing into one another?”

  Lokk tossed the bleeding bird carcass at Sage’s feet. “Ulrean was just preparing dinner.”

  Shanks laughed. “Now, that was entertaining”

  Chapter 33

  Without their swords and armor, soldiers are just large farmers.

  —Yanic Hynter, Knight-Protector of Vurie

  Sage spent the last of his pepper on the bird, basted it in the last of his wine.

  Ulrean sat with Aramaesia, a dozen feet from Lokk. The boy didn’t touch the seared jurren meat, and the Eridian had donned his sallet.

  “I hate him,” said Ulrean, loud enough for Lokk Lurius to hear. “He’s a monster.”

  “You will meet many people in your life, Ulrean,” said Aramaesia. “Some may seem wicked, but all people are, in their hearts, good and honest. Sometimes life confuses them. It makes them lose track of what is right and what is wrong.”

  “I will remind him of what is right and what is wrong,” said Ulrean. “I hate him.” He turned to the Eridian and shouted. “What you did is a crime. A peasant like you should never touch his superior! I will have the skin flogged off your bones for this! I hate you, you coward.”

  Lokk stopped chewing. He stood and threw his plate down. His eyes were just visible behind the visor of his sallet, and murder lay in his gaze. Aramaesia stood and stepped in front of Ulrean. “He is angry,” she said, holding her hands out. “Please, much has happened to him… Lokk he is just a child!” Lurius pushed her aside. She stumbled and fell, then sprang to her feet and scooped up her bow.

  Ulrean scrambled backward again, the bravado gone. He set one leg down and stood, shaking, backed until his path was blocked by a boulder. Lokk pressed forward, dropped to a knee. The Eridian grabbed Ulrean’s frayed tunic and pulled the boy forward and upward until the child’s feet no longer touched the ground. He leaned forward until the child’s nose was a hair from the sallet helm and glared. Lokk’s scarred chin, rugged with four days of stubble, twisted with rage. The boy’s smooth, tear-streaked face, tiny and round, soft with childhood, eyes wide, mouth agape.

  Aramaesia strung her bow swiftly and drew an arrow back. She aimed it between Lokk’s shoulder
blades. No one spoke. No one moved. Ulrean fumbled in his collar and drew out the Nightjar Pendant. His trembling hands held it out toward the Eridian. The pendant shimmered between them.

  “Suhira Suenath.” The boy’s voice trembled.

  Four heartbeats passed in silence. No one moved. The red color slowly drained from Lokk’s neck. He stared at the boy for another moment then spoke: “Ribbit.”

  Ulrean’s eyes grew wide. The Eridian released the boy’s tunic, nudged him back into the boulder with one forefinger. He held the same finger up with severity, a warning, before standing and returning to his pack. He picked up his meal and strode toward the opposite end of the camp, away from Ulrean and everyone else.

  The child stared at the pendant and tried to hide a smile. Aramaesia brought the bowstring back to neutral and said a short prayer. She kissed the Ulrean’s cheek, set her bow down and raced after Lokk.

  Beldrun Shanks watched her leave.

  His eyes found the child. Alone on the haypad. The infantryman’s gaze drifted downward, to his axe, the twin steel blades pulsing in the forest light. He stooped, picked up the massive weapon. Walked toward the boy. His hands tightened and loosened along the wooden haft.

  †††

  “Lokk, wait.” Aramaesia followed the Eridian over the ramparts and a dozen paces across the clearing, to the edge of the forest. He sat down among the trees and chewed at a strip of jurren meat. “Lokk, please. I… I want to apologize.”

  The Eridian stopped eating and looked up.

  “I never… I never apologized for …” She gestured toward his leg.

  Lokk glanced at his thigh, where the arrow had pierced it on their first meeting. He rubbed it with one hand, shrugged, continued eating.

  Aramaesia tugged the plate gently from his hand. “Please, Lokk. I also wanted to thank you. You were kind to Ulrean back there.”

  “I know what you’re after,” he said.

  She wrinkled her nose. “What am I after?”

  “I’d be happy to give you a good churn,” he said. “But we’re not supposed to shag on assignment.”

  She slapped him so hard that a sliver of jurren meat flew from his mouth. He looked back at her with a smile.

  †††

  The boy held the pendant between thumb and forefinger and stared at it raptly. He didn’t notice Shanks’s right away. Only when the faint shadow of the giant infantryman fell upon him did he look up and gasp. He tried to put the necklace on but his hands turned stony and he dropped it. The child looked up at Shanks as his hands clawed for the pendant.

  The infantryman’s eyes narrowed. He adjusted his grip. “You like weapons?” he asked. “Here.” He held out the axe. “You can hold my axe if you like. I don’t mind none.”

  Ulrean waited for his heart to slow before reaching out carefully toward the weapon. An instant before he touched it, Shanks pulled it back.

  †††

  “Poor Lokk,” called Aramaesia. “What a horrible life he has had. So bad, in fact, that the rest of the world must pay for what has been done to him.”

  Lokk spit out a pepper, grabbed the dish back from her and picked up another strip of jurren.

  “What is the sense?” She shook her head and turned.

  Lokk spoke before she could walk away. “You ought not be telling that boy those lilly tales.”

  Aramaesia glanced back. “He’s a child. He’s scared. If Maribrae tells him stories to keep his spirits up, what harm is there in it?”

  “Ain’t Maribrae’s stories I was talking about,” he said. “All that thrull-shit about people being honest and good. You’re making him weak. I hope down the trail, when he’s older, it don’t make him bitter. Knowing everything you told him is a lie.”

  She gave him a sad smile. “We create our worlds, as much as our worlds create us, Lokk Lurius.”

  “Maiden, I’m a warrior. I got no idea what that means.”

  “Precisely,” she said.

  He looked up at her, his look of puzzlement melting into an inspection of her body, from legs to face. “You know,” he said. “I don’t think the Brig is that much a stickler for that shagging thing. You up for it?”

  She rolled her eyes and sighed.

  And then she heard the screams.

  †††

  Shanks held the axe away from the boy’s grasp. “There’s one rule,” he said. “You don’t touch the edge. Thing is sharp as demon spines. You touch that edge, it’ll cut your finger in two. You even think about touching the edge, it’ll cut your brain in two. That’s how sharp it is. You understand?”

  The boy nodded, reached out and took hold of the axe haft. “This certainly is a handsome axe.”

  “Sure it’s handsome. And you ain’t got any idea how many heads it’s lopped off.”

  Ulrean’s eyes went wide. “You were a headsman?”

  Sage laughed.

  “No!” said Shanks. “I wasn’t no executioner. I took the heads off in battle.”

  Ulrean raised one brow, twisted his mouth. “How do you take a man’s head in battle? They must not have been very skilled men.”

  “Ha!” said Shanks. “I’ve killed men that …” he glanced in the direction Lokk and Aramaesia had walked, lowered his voice, “that would make Lokk seem like a quintain.”

  “I find that difficult to believe,” said Ulrean.

  “What’s wrong with your head, boy?” said Shanks. “Look at this battle face.” He scowled angrily. “I take the head of every fifth man I fight. They woulda given me the name Headsman if it weren’t already taken.”

  Ulrean shrugged. “I suppose.”

  Shanks scowled more deeply. “No, I mean it. I have a secret move. It can’t be stopped.”

  Ulrean nodded and held the axe out. “I’m feeling tired. I think I will sleep now.”

  “Drusse’s Chin you will,” said Shanks. “I’m gonna show you. Stand up and I’ll give you a demonstration.”

  Ulrean slipped the necklace over his head and stood on shaky legs. Shanks pulled a dagger from its sheath and handed it to the boy. “Pretend that dagger is a sword,” he said. “Hold it as if you’re trying to defend against me.”

  Ulrean held the dagger out, moving it upward, then downward awkwardly.

  “No, not like that,” said Shanks. “Ain’t you never been trained to fight? Raise it up, like you’ve got hate in your heart.”

  Ulrean lifted the dagger high, clutched it tightly.

  “There’s the look!” The big man raised the axe over his head. “Now, it’s all about trickery. You raise the axe high so you get lots of speed.” He lifted the axe as high as it would go.

  “Beldrun,” called Sage. “This isn’t a good idea.”

  Grae and Hammer stepped out from the pavilion.

  “Clench your teeth, princess,” Shanks snapped at Sage. “I’m not actually going to do it, you oaf. I’m just showing him how it’s done.”

  Sage and Sir Jastyn rose to their feet. Hammer opened his mouth to shout at the infantryman but Grae stayed him with a hand.

  “So, you swing the axe down,” said Shanks, still holding it over his head. “And as you do, you make your whole body look like you’re going for a rib shot. But as soon as your enemy commits to mid-target, you twist your wrists and change your arc, and before he knows what’s what, he’s staring at his body from ten feet away.”

  Ulrean set his feet and held the dagger up again. He lifted his chin and Shanks got a good look at the willowy neck.

  “Shanks, you sack of ogre piss, stop it,” said Sage.

  The axe hung in the sky for two eternities. A beam of sunlight pierced the canopy, striking one of the blades, making it glitter. Shanks brought his arms down swiftly, the axe arcing toward the boy’s chest.

  Grae stumbled forward, “Shanks, no!”

  The brig’s world froze. As if soft amber had been poured over the camp, slowing time itself. Hammer watched with a scowl, arms crossed, pipe in mouth. Sage’s hand held the grip o
f his sheathed short sword. Rundle, returning from his perimeter, stared with brows furrowed. Meedryk Bodlyn sat quietly against the rampart, chanting, watching the scene calmly.

  Shanks’s elbows shifted inward toward his body, his wrists pivoted changing the axe’s trajectory. The boy stood with his chin high, neck shining pale in the afternoon light.

  The blade wobbled in the patchy sunlight, wooshed through the air. Came closer and closer to the boy.

  “Shanks, no!” Grae howled.

  The axe head wobbled one last time on the way to its target, then came free of the haft. The blades spun through the air, whirling lethargically in the thick, warping molasses of Grae’s suspended time.

  Meedryk Bodlyn, directly in the path of the spinning blades, had only an instant to fall onto his back. The vortex of rushing air stirred his hair as the pirouetting steel passed inches over his face. One of the heavy steel blades bit into the earthen rampart walls and the lethal flight ended.

  And for Grae, time sprang back to normal.

  He sprinted toward Shanks, shouting “No! No! No!”

  Sage’s hand slipped away from the pommel of the short sword.

  Rundle’s brows were pegged to his hairline.

  Aramaesia appeared in the clearing, sprinting toward the camp and shouting something unintelligible. She hurdled the rampart and scooped the child up, turned to Shanks and shouted an uninterrupted stream of furious Graci in his direction. Lokk walked to the archer’s side at his own pace, hands hovering above the grips of his theiyras.

  “Have you lost your wits!” shouted Hammer.

  Shanks studied the shaft of his axe. “I wasn’t going to hit him. I was just showing him. I just…”

  “Shanks, leave the camp.” Grae’s face was flushed. “Do a perimeter. Tell Jastyn you’re relieving him. I don’t want to see you until the squad is ready to move.”

  “Hey,” he replied. “There’s no call for that, sir. I were only cheering the boy, is all.”

  “Get out, before we throw you out,” yelled Hammer. Lokk took a step forward to emphasize the point.

  “Harpy’s queynt,” shouted Shanks as he stormed away. He kicked over the soup kettle on the way out, sending a flood of stew into the flames. A thick swirl of smoke and steam hissed into the air. He paused only to free his axe head from the rampart.