by Kaleb Schad
Marcen didn’t know what pissed him off more, that she’d run or that she’d laughed at his discipline.
“Nobody returns without the Lady Isabell,” Nattic shouted. “You hear?”
The men chorused a “yes, sir!”
A strange alchemic mix of fury, betrayal and fear churned through Blackhand. His daughter, his beautiful, stupid daughter. His best chance at redeeming his father’s name, she was out there. Running. Fleeing her family, her duty. A betrayal Marcen could never understand. Forgive.
Add to it, she was wasting precious time. Nobody knew for sure how fast that bone wall would move. It had stayed mostly still for generations. For Marcen’s plan to work, he’d need precise timing. They’d have to stay at Fisher Pass until the very last moment, making sure nobody left the village, holding people steady until the wall reached them. Yet, don’t wait too long. It didn’t do anyone any good if he died in the Wretched’s attack along with his peasants. They had to be ready to run at the last minute. That meant having all of his pieces positioned just right and at that moment Isabell was a key piece not even on the playing board. He could feel his fury boiling. Gods he wanted to hurt someone.
“Now, Willowfoot says he saw tracks heading south,” Nattic called. He had one foot in the stirrup to pull himself up, but the horse kept sidestepping away, forcing him to hop alongside it. “He’ll lead the way, but we don’t stop until—gods dammit!” His foot slipped and he plummeted onto his ass.
One of the soldiers laughed a loud cawing sound closer to a dying cow than a human. Marcen recognized him.
“You, son!”
The yard fell silent.
The soldier looked behind him, then pointed to his chest.
“No, the fucking crow behind you. Yes, you!” the baron shouted. He stormed down the steps, across the yard.
Up close, the soldier was young, barely growing whiskers over his lip.
“You were stationed on my daughter’s room last night?” the baron asked.
“I-I-”
Nattic pushed himself up to his feet. “My lord—”
Marcen held a hand up to him without taking his eyes from the boy.
“Answer me, son.”
“My lord,” the soldier squeaked. “I, uh—”
“Come on down so I can talk to you.”
The soldier looked at Nattic before obeying. That put the blood in Marcen’s ears.
The boy dismounted and dropped to a knee in front of the baron.
“Didn’t you hear Sir Nattic?” Marcen pulled back the boy’s hood. His eyes were wet. “The bevor—or gorget in your case—goes over the breastplate. Here, let me show you something.” He lifted the entire headpiece off of the soldier, exposing his naked skin. Crystal beads of sweat puddled in the hollow of his throat.
“This is an important piece of armor.” He dangled the chainmail like a fish between them. “Hard men are still soft when it comes to blades.” Marcen drew his sword Seven Claws, the blue steel glistening in the grey light.
“My lord…” Nattic whispered. He stood next to Marcen. “Please.”
Marcen ignored him. He gestured for the soldier to stand.
“The underside of us. Parts like the nethers.” Marcen touched his sword to the man’s crotch, let it chime against the plate armor. “The insides of our thighs.” Another ring of steel on steel. “The armpits.” He scraped the sword up along the boy’s ribs. “These are all soft parts where a blade will sneak in as silent as the Rot and as deadly. Thus why we need armor. Do you understand?”
“Yes, L-L-Lord,” the boy stammered.
“And do you know what my armor is?”
The kid shook his head.
“You,” Marcen whispered. “My armor is you. All of you.”
“Yes, my lord,” the boy said.
“He’s new, my lord,” Nattic said.
“And as my armor, I depend on you to protect me. Me and all that is mine. So I ask you again. Were you stationed outside of my daughter’s room last night when she decided to leave and run into the wild?”
“His second week since taking the mark.”
“Another word, Sir Nattic, and I will sheathe my sword in your fucking chest!” Marcen screamed the last words.
A stray leaf cartwheeled across the yard, carried by a sticky breeze.
Someone coughed, tried stifling it only to make it worse.
Marcen smiled. “Go on, son. Answer me.”
“My-my-my Lord.” The kid was crying. “I was, but I swear I didn’t hear any—”
Seven Claws entered the boy’s throat, then peeked out the back, winking wet and red at the stunned soldiers mounted behind him and when Marcen withdrew it, the head tilted sideways, dropped like a hairy ball.
Use that for a game of Kiggle Knocks.
He reached down and tore the greaves from the dead boy’s wrist, exposing the stag tattoo of house Blackhand. The skin was still pink around the fresh ink. “He took the mark! You all have the mark!” Spit flew from his lips. He made sure to capture every single soldier’s eye. “You are my armor. There can be no chinks in my armor!”
Black blood guttered out of the boy’s exposed neck holes, forming a muddy puddle at his feet.
“Either my daughter returns alive or you won’t.”
Alysha stood on her porch praying, her eyes tracing the sun’s steady slouch towards the horizon. Never in her life had she prayed for something she knew Airim, despite all his power and glory, wouldn’t give. Yet, there she was, pleading for him to pause the sun’s fall. The rain had ceased, but a flat powder color remained. Every finger width of sky that shrank between the sun’s hazy disc and the grey mountains brought her that much closer to having to go to the Sunflower Stop.
Nikolai crossed from the barn to her, his shirt and slacks covered in straw and mud. Already it seemed the child had grown. Taller, like his father, but bending under the burdens that crushed his twenty-seven-summer father, much less an eight-summer boy.
“I have to go into the Sunflower Stop this evening,”
He stopped at the bottom of the steps. “Yes, ma’am.”
“You’ll watch Elnis.”
Nikolai nodded.
“I don’t want any fighting.”
“We won’t fight.”
“It’s warm, so I don’t want you starting a fire without me here.”
He kicked at the dirt.
“You can say it,” she said.
He looked at her and there were purple pouches swelling under his eyes.
“I wish you didn’t have to go.”
“Evan Malic wants someone working your pa’s shift.”
“Mr. Malic isn’t a nice man.”
Alysha could feel hairline fractures along her heart threatening to yawn open. She beckoned Nikolai up the steps, pulled him into a hug.
“He’s not,” she said, “but—”
“But what if he hurts you.”
“Hurt me?”
“Or the big one.”
“Two Fingers?”
“Pa says he saw him punch Mr. Wimbelslid once and now Mr. Wimbelslid can’t eat anything without cutting it into tiny pieces with a knife. Has to suck on things to soften them and swallow them whole.”
“Nobody is punching anyone. I can’t believe your father told you that. When he gets home…” She caught herself and stopped.
It was too late. Tears already glinted in the dusk light.
“Why did he go?” Nikolai whispered. “I’m sorry I had the bit. Elnis had found it and we just thought we could make a trap with it and I was going to put it back after…” He lost the words under the sobs.
She pulled him into her, burying his face into her chest. She couldn’t let him see her own tears. He shouldn’t have to worry for the both of them.
23
A violet dusk filled the forest and Anaz wondered if they’d make it to his cabin before night fully fell. They were approaching that part of the road he’d seen the elven couple assaulted at bef
ore leaving for Fisher Pass. He could still hear the woman’s screams.
“Your limp is already getting better,” Isabell said. She walked next to him, leading Domino. She’d said if he wasn’t going to ride with her, she wasn’t going to make him walk and look up at her all day long, plus she wanted the exercise.
“Your bruised ribs seem to be a little better,” he said.
She glanced at him out of the corner of her eyes. “You could tell?”
“I’m sorry to say, I’ve experience with men like your father.”
“Can I ask you something?” Her tone told Anaz everything he needed to know about how much she wanted to talk about her father.
“Please.”
“How did you learn that sword form? Abek-cia Seven.”
Anaz kicked a pine cone as we walked, watched it cartwheel along the trail. He could feel the weight of her question, the risks of revealing anything about himself.
“Abek-cia created nine forms in total,” he said. “One form each for various numbers of opponents up to five, then variations on the forms based on elevations. He’d learned fighting in the mountains not unlike these and wanted his people to be adept at all situations.”
“But how did you learn it? My master at arms said his master had learned it from a man who claimed to have come from Anathest, but that they’d only ever learned that one form.”
“That sounds true. Abek-cia was from Anathest.”
“Great Airim. I never believed the story,” she said. “Humay—all the nations, I guess—has been using Anathest as a prison colony for longer than the wall has existed. Everyone knows nobody comes back from Anathest. That desert is impassable except for the strongest magic users. And even then…”
Anaz wanted to tell her more. What would it hurt? It had been so long since he’d had someone to talk to, someone interested in him. What would it hurt? “Abek-cia was from my people,” he said. “He was an Ascenic.”
Isabell stopped walking. Domino lowered her head almost immediately, nibbling at the tiny grass in the road.
Anaz turned to her.
“You’re from Anathest? How…”
“It took me a very long time.”
“Are you a…I mean, were you exiled there? Your parents?”
“Many, many generations ago, our forefathers were, but Vlakrim, who formed the Ascenics, left the cities to claim what peace could be found in that nation. We live—they live—in the mountains on the far side.”
He started walking again and was relieved when he heard Isabell following. Had he said too much? What must she be thinking of him now—maybe a runaway thief, or a murderer or some kind of political criminal? Was she afraid of him now? The questions churned in the long silence.
“Could you teach me the other forms?” she asked. Anaz was ashamed at how relieved he was at the question. And disappointed.
“I cannot.”
“You don’t know them?”
“I know them.”
“But you won’t teach me. Because I’m a woman.” She barely contained her spite.
“That is not why. The strongest fighter I ever met was a woman.”
Isabell sighed. “Well, at least you aren’t like my father, then. Even with Ella Stonehome practically waging the war against the Wretched single handedly, he refuses to believe a woman can lead men in battle.”
“I do not know this Stonehome.”
“She’s an Airim’s Lance. She’s why I want to join them. She wears a Daughter of Airim symbol, but she wears it upside down. They say where most Daughters channel Airim’s love to heal, Ella channels his hatred of the undead to kill. She’s incredible. I want to be like her. I want to help my people take back this land from these monsters and it’ll only happen if all of us, men and women, fight.”
Anaz nodded. Anaz envied the way Isabell knew who and what she was, what she wanted to be. Yet, wasn’t that what the hsing-li told him not to do? So much struggle. So much caring. “Or you could leave,” he said. “Let what happens happen. Refuse to fight.”
Isabell squinted at him. “Is that why you won’t teach me the other forms? You refuse to fight?”
“I—”
Anaz heard the men only moments before they scrambled out of the bush onto the road.
“Well,” said one of the men as he climbed onto the road from the sloping hill below. He wore no shirt, with a battle axe strapped across his shoulder. He picked small sticks out of his braided red hair. “I gotta’ say. I’m right excited you two dropped in on us. Been a while since we had company.”
Anaz reached for a sword that wasn’t there. He cursed himself for both wanting to grab a weapon and for not having one. He had a feeling, both options were going to be needed.
24
Alysha had to admit it was going about as awful as she’d expected. Say one thing for her intuition, it was dead on. What’s that tell you for the way Malic keeps looking at you, then?
He stood at the door leading back into the kitchen wiping a long-handled pan with a towel. He’d been scrubbing that pan for ten minutes watching her, grinning at the blowhards sitting at the bar. All night he’d been finding reasons to come behind it, to stand near her, showing her where mugs were and where the ale pitchers were, as if she couldn’t see them for herself.
“Tell me again.” Ronin Smithson laughed. He slapped the bar, sloshing another half mug of beer across the front of it. He’d spent more coin in spilled ale than Alysha had spent in a year. Not that that was very much, but the waste annoyed her. Wiping up after him annoyed her. And his damn needling of Daveon definitely annoyed her.
“And he knows the wall ain’t coming?” Flander Hettnon asked. He and Ronin had planted themselves at the bar like two weeds the moment they’d noticed Alysha working it.
“Ran right off like a mutt in heat,” Malic said. “This is why I always tell you folks, everyone so worried about keeping their head, excepting they lose it first chance they get.”
“Least he thought of his neighbors,” Elliot said from further down the bar. “Didn’t see nobody else jumping to run towards that wall to save his fellows.”
“I’m thinking about them,” Ronin said. “Thinking how happy they’ll be when they show up and are told they went a runnin’ from shadows.” He laughed and slapped the bar again.
Alysha leaned across it, catching the spilled ale before it ran over the edge. Something slapped her rear. She yelped and straightened and glared behind her. Malic walked past, tossing a wink over his shoulder. He sat at the stool behind the bar, then set out a cleaver and a large flat stone.
Alysha’s face flared, her breath surging through her nose.
“Better to run from shadows than to be eaten by them,” she said.
Malic smeared oil across the stone. He slid the cleaver in a slow circular motion across it, a raspy pulsing sound. He watched her as he did it.
“Any rate,” Malic said. “Should be back in a few days, isn’t that what you said, Aly? Can I call you Aly?”
“No,” she said, refusing to look away. “You cannot.”
He grinned at her.
“If he makes it,” he said. “Dangerous out there. Unpredictable.”
Schhht, schhht, schhht. Around and around the cleaver ground.
“Daveon?” Elliot said. “The Therentell who fought with Rayen at Lindisfarne? Killed more Fletchers and Wallwraiths than all the men in this inn combined? No two days’ trip going to get him. Don’t you worry none, Mrs. Therentell.”
Malic slammed the cleaver into bar, bouncing every mug along its length. Ronin jumped backwards. His stool skidded sideways.
Malic stabbed a finger at Elliot. “Anyone ever bring up that fucking battle again in my bar and they best find an appetite for tongue because they’ll be eating theirs. Killing ain’t so hard a thing as to be worth all the noise. I can show you, if you insist.”
Alysha clenched her hands in front of her, realized she was holding her breath. She let it out slowly. Forced her ha
nds open.
Ronin righted his stool, picked up his mug and frowned into it, then set it back on the bar. “Right then,” he said and stumbled off towards the door, the sunflower seed husks crunching under his boots.
Malic frowned at the cleaver wedged into the wood. “Aly, sharpen that for me.” He stood and walked past her back into the kitchen.
Alysha tried to dislodge the blade from the bar, but it wouldn’t budge. She wiped her hands on her apron, tried again. Still couldn’t loosen it.
Elliot moved down to her. He reached across and tugged at the handle, making it look so simple when it came free.
He handed it over to her. “I wouldn’t worry none, about your husband,” he said. “Or old Evan Malic.”
She wasn’t. Not much at least. She was worried about her boys. Home. Alone. All night.
She delicately slid the blade on the stone. She’d never done anything like this. Why was she even here? Malic didn’t need the help. There were exactly three people in the entire inn tonight and one of them just left, and, oh, look at that, there goes another.
Flander pushed open the door, tugging his hood over his hair.
“Thank you,” Alysha said. “Daveon always said how much he appreciated being able to talk to you here. How you made his nights bearable.”
“That’s mighty fine of you to say. I appreciate his stories myself. My daughter, Lila, I tell her the stories when I get home at night.”
“How’s Lila been?” Alysha knew she’d been one of the few to survive the Rot, though many may have preferred death over what “surviving” meant for her.
“Every day is a blessing from Airim.”
