by Kaleb Schad
Daveon screamed and snatched at his sword. Not the last of his supplies. Not now. Not these creatures. They were small, barely larger than Nikolai, but with heads like pumpkins. Broad ears speared out sideways and tufts of hair grew out of the canals and in random patterns on their scalps. They wore odd scraps of fabric and bone necklaces and carried rusted cleavers and blades. All stolen goods, he was sure. Under the moonlight, they looked even more loathsome than he’d imagined.
He sprinted toward the closest and swung his sword, but the creature ducked it easily and jumped away laughing. That wet, giggling sound from his dream.
He’d be damned if he was going to lose the last of his supplies to these little shits.
Another laugh came from behind him. He spun and scythed his blade in a vicious arc. It smacked against a wiblin’s hand axe, a screeching clank in the darkness. The creature bowled over backwards. Daveon wanted to whoop with joy. He lunged forward and tried spearing the wiblin to the ground, but it rolled and scrambled up on its hands and knees and sprinted under some brush, disappearing into the shadows.
Syla whinnied. A wiblin sat on her back, burying its teeth deep into her shoulder. She reared and stomped, trying to chase off the critters. Red hustled away as fast as his hobbles would allow. Daveon sprinted toward his horses. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of his packs drop out of the tree. The bastards were going to get away with his food and supplies, everything he needed to make it another week in the mountains. But if he chased them, they’d kill his horse, kill his favorite horse, and that wasn’t something he could let happen.
As if she could tell what he was going to do, Syla turned sideways just as Daveon reached her, giving him a clear shot at the wiblin on her back. He leaped and snatched the wiblin by one of its ears and let his momentum haul the creature from off his horse. It landed on its back with a surprised yelp, then screamed when Daveon’s sword planted itself into its belly. The jarring scrape of rib bones shook the sword in Daveon’s grip.
He whipped it free of the creature, blood arcing away from the sword’s tip. He scooped up a small rock and threw it as hard as he could at one of the running wiblins carrying his pack. Just like knocking buckets off his brothers’ heads back in the day, the stone thwacked into the back of the wiblin’s skull. The creature sprawled onto its belly, the pack tumbling from his grip.
Daveon reached it just as it was getting back to its feet. He swung at it with his sword, but the tip only snagged the flapping fabric of its coat. It laughed as it ran away.
Another laugh came from behind him. He spun and slashed at it. Nothing but air. A wiblin with a rotted rabbit head bobbing from its neck, danced just out of reach. The creature slipped around Daveon and slashed at his leg with its cleaver. He felt the blade cut into the back of his thigh and fell.
Not here. Not like this. This isn’t where you die. This isn’t how your wife and your children find out you died.
He waited, feigning more pain than he felt. The creature, seeing its opportunity, sprinted at Daveon, lifting its cleaver high overhead like a flag. Daveon sliced his sword through the wiblin’s legs, taking one off just below the knee, the edge digging deep into the other. The creature cried out and plunged face first into the dirt, its cleaver cartwheeling away. Daveon jumped up and hacked down into the back of the creature’s skull, desperate to end its screaming misery.
He spun, certain another wiblin was behind him, but there wasn’t. He could hear them racing through the brush, disappearing into the night.
He’d done it! He whooped and then screamed, laughing. His heart thudded and every breath felt like fire in his chest. Pain pulsed up and down his cut thigh. And yet, all he wanted to do was laugh and tell Alysha about the time he’d fought off a pack of wiblins who’d tried to steal his supplies and leave him for dead in the mountains. Oh, wait until Nikolai hears this one.
He turned to find his horses and saw the two dead bodies on the ground. Black blood in the night’s shadows pooled out from them, blending with the rain’s puddles. Their tiny hands looked like a child’s hands. Like his sons’ hands.
His legs began to shake. He’d done that. He’d killed them.
He took a shuddering breath.
He’d killed them.
He sat with his arms across his knees, his head hanging, his thigh throbbing, blood pooling in his crotch.
Maybe he wouldn’t tell Nikolai about this. Maybe the boy didn’t need to know.
27
Anaz led Isabell up the mountain. They’d traveled another mile down the road, then cut to the north, up the mountain slope. Behind them, lay the bodies of the thieves. Anaz had raised the unconscious man back up out of the road and insisted on binding his wounds as best they could before leaving him. Isabell only nodded and helped.
The thrill of the fight washed away from them like a wave on the coast and what washed in on the next wave was regret. He could see it in her as well as felt it in himself. What had they done?
Once in the forest, what little sunlight remained disappeared. Nothing but darkness and ghostly edges of trees and shrubs. Red crossbills gave a few final squeaks for the evening, soon replaced by the long trilling call of whippoorwills once the moon rose.
“I killed them,” Isabell whispered. “Oh, Airim…”
Anaz wasn’t even sure he’d heard it, she said it so quietly.
Domino’s hooves crunched against pinecones and downed branches.
Didn’t he share in her guilt? No, he hadn’t killed any of them directly, but he’d certainly helped her kill them. But was there ever a time when killing was okay? Hadn’t Reyn said as much? With the kind of skill and power he’d been given, was standing by and letting someone die as bad as killing them himself?
It was late when they arrived at Anaz’s cabin. Overhead the clouds had cleared and a sea of stars spoke of heavens and untouchables.
“Why have we stopped?” Isabell asked. She whispered it. It was like that in the forest at night. A kind of silent reverence where words felt insulting.
“My home,” Anaz said and pointed.
It was a small hut, barely wide enough for Anaz to lie down in. He had felled a handful of trees, limbed and stripped them, then halved again for posts. The walls were mostly mud and rocks between posts. He’d thought he’d done a fine job for someone who’d never built anything in his entire life, but the look on her face said she didn’t think the house fit for a grizzly.
“You live here,” Isabell said.
Other than the large garden behind the hut, he knew it looked abandoned. There were no possessions inside the cabin or out. Nothing that said life was sustained here. Nothing that could be coveted or taken by another, not even the self. It was as the hsing-li asked Anaz to live and it had provided for three years as such.
He felt a sting of his old pride. He wanted to tell her about the feasts he had eaten at Hakkana’s tower, how tens of thousands used to chant his name, about Narek’s clothing and wine and women, that he knew her world, knew wealth and had given it up. Walked away from it. No. Not walked. Killed his way out of it. Don’t hide those sins.
Anaz stopped himself. He closed his eyes, then said, “I built it.”
“It’s perfect.” She dismounted.
His mouth tasted sour with sudden panic.
“You’re coming in?”
She still had a foot in a stirrup and looked at him. A new kind of fear in her eyes, uncertainty. “Can I?”
He looked at the cabin again. It was small. They would be tight in there. And what if she woke in the morning and asked him to come with again? Would one yes make it easier to say another?
“I’m not going with you in the morning,” Anaz said. “You can stay, but don’t ask me again in the morning. Just pay me and then I head for Clover Hollow and you can find the Airim’s Lances.”
She shook her head, her eyes slacking under disappointment.
“I’d expect nothing less,” she said.
Expectations. T
he hsing-li’s or the baron’s daughter’s. Or his own. When would he know whose to meet and whose to flee from?
Anaz woke, listening to an owl hooting and realized that he hadn’t been dreaming. No nightmares. Nothing. It was the first time in the seven years since fleeing Hakkana and Abaleth that he could remember not having a nightmare.
It took another several moments before he was awake enough to figure out what that hot wetness was on the back of his neck. Isabell. She had rolled against him in her sleep, her hips pushed into his, two pieces of a puzzle slotted together. He could feel her chest pushing against his back as she breathed, the gentle sigh in and out, her smell. Despite the sweaty travel, it was a clean smell, like soap and rainwater. Like woman.
At that moment, laying there with her against him, he felt as if the earth itself had nested in around them. A pool of pure peace beneath them. Floating, but heavy. A sense of calm he could only ever find inside the hsing-li, but this was through him. And her.
He counted. Seven years. Seven years since he had touched another person like this, allowed another person to touch him. Even in the caravan, out of Anathest, when the desert nights had turned bitterly cold and the others had huddled in a pile for warmth, he had slept alone.
He didn’t move away from her.
It frightened him how badly he hoped the sun would never rise.
If he’d learned anything in Abaleth with Hakkana, it was this: there was more than one way a man could die. Laying there, this woman’s body cradling his, her sins and dreams wedged into him, he felt certain that come morning, he would be faced with a life and death decision.
28
Alysha woke to Elnis laying in bed with her. His small form next to her, his cold feet finding her legs, these were the first things that morning that made her want to squeeze her eyes shut and never open them again and maybe let the tears and world come out of them.
She’d been dreaming. A time from when Daveon had been courting her. They’d snuck out of their parents’ houses and met down at the creek that defined the boundary between the Therentell ranch and her parents’ land. He’d gotten there first, had lain out a deer skin blanket and some brandy he’d swiped from his father’s cabinet and they’d stretched out and counted shooting stars. He pointed out all of the constellations, weaving the gods’ stories in the heavens. She’d loved listening to his stories. The emotions he could put into them, making tiny meaningless dots in the sky suddenly mean more than life itself. She’d kept creeping closer and closer, pressing her body into his—for warmth, she’d assured him—until she couldn’t take it anymore and surprised them both with the kiss. Their first kiss.
It was at that moment she’d woken, desperate not to cry. The thought that had done it, the thought that had tailed Alysha into wakefulness was, what if this is the only body to sleep next to me for the rest of my life? What if he doesn’t come back?
Sitting up was a struggle. Her back throbbed, a thousand knotted muscles playing tug-o-war with her neck and hips. She didn’t want to plant her feet on the floor. A blister had formed on her big toe and the soles of her feet felt as if she’d been walking barefoot on stones all night.
Was this how he had felt? Was this what every morning was like for him after working the Sunflower Stop?
Nikolai was already up and out. The sun was higher than she’d ever let it get in the morning before waking. She stood and pulled on a robe over her nightshift and walked into the main room. She looked out the front window and had to force back a second wave of tears.
There, half towing, half begging Fennel out of the barn into the small turnout, was Nikolai. He was doing the chores. Already. Without urging.
He was doing Daveon’s chores.
29
When Daveon finally saw the Evenson farm, his heart did a little twist in his chest. There it was. The first home where he’d do something real, something that finally mattered for someone else. He nudged Syla forward.
Once he’d stopped his leg’s bleeding, there hadn’t been any hope of going back to sleep for either him or his horses, so he’d figured why wait? The moon was enough to see by. Exhaustion dragged at him. It felt as if sand had been packed into his eyes sockets, grinding every time he glanced one way or another.
Seeing the Evenson farm was like a jolt of black coffee with a side of ass kicking. Even Syla put a spring in her gait.
He dropped down the face of the mountain, bottomed out into a wheat field, its stalks standing golden and mute in the sunrise. Already the family had begun their work. In the field next were rows and rows of cabbages. Each plant a giant bowl of green leaves with a ball in the center. Two horses pulled a low wooden cart and behind it trailed the Evensons, hunched over the massive bushes, machetes at the necks of the cabbages, hacking them free and tossing them into the wagon. A young girl in a yellow dress stood in the wagon rolling the cabbages to the front. She looked at Daveon and pointed. The figures in the field stood and turned towards him.
“Ho good Evensons,” Daveon called.
He reined back on Syla, slowing her to a gentle walk. Weren’t no reason to charge the poor folks.
There were four of them in total. The father, Daveon was pretty sure his name was Jaren, his two sons and the little girl in the wagon. The oldest son looked to be nearly a man full while the other still sported a speckling of acne.
Jaren Evenson was a stocky, middle aged man with a hearty grey beard. Daveon had only spoken to the man once, something like twelve summers past, back when he’d bought a breeding pair of horses from his old man. Yet, seeing him here today, Daveon recognized him well enough. That same flat, red nose and a furious scowl.
“Ho stranger,” Jaren said. His eyes glanced at Daveon’s blood stained leg and the mud caked horses. He tightened his grip on the machete.
“Daveon Therentell. Come down from Fisher Pass.”
“Alright,” Jaren said.
The oldest Evenson son stepped around to Daveon’s side. He held his own machete.
“Sorry to say I bear bad news.”
Jaren turned his head slightly and spit. His eyes never left Daveon.
“The wall’s moving north.”
The little girl in the wagon paused carrying a cabbage to the front of the wagon, looked at her pa, then to her brother.
“Moving north,” Jaren said. “The wall.”
“A king’s messenger arrived two nights back. Said the wall was coming north and we have to evacuate up to Earl Ventner’s lands. That it would reach us in two week’s time at most.”
“A harpy’s tits, that’s what he said,” the eldest boy said.
“Winson,” Jaren said to his son, then squinted up at Daveon. “How come he ain’t come through here?”
“I don’t know where he came from,” Daveon said.
Jaren glanced at Daveon’s leg again. “Where’d you come from?”
“I said. Fisher Pass. I’m on my way down to the Skets. I have some horses down there I need to retrieve.”
“Retrieve,” Winson scoffed. “More like steal. Pa, look at him.”
The younger son now moved around to Daveon’s other side, the three Evensons surrounding him.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. They were supposed to weep with relief and maybe there’d be a gorgeous young lady who leapt into his arms and gave him a grateful kiss on the cheek and they’d ride off safely forever remembering who it was that’d saved them. Yet how could he be surprised? What would he do if someone showed up bloody and muddy with two beaten horses and said he needed to abandon his home and run away? What kind of an idiot was he?
Exactly the kind that runs from his family for some foolish notion of heroism and then loses his damn life along the way.
“Wiblins tried stealing my supplies last night,” he said.
Jaren nodded, thinking.
“Look,” Daveon pleaded. “You can’t stay here. That wall is coming and you know that means the Wretched will be out in front of it. Fletchers and
Red Tails, gods know what else. It’ll be here and…” he looked at the little girl in the wagon, then back to Jaren. “When they get here you guys shouldn’t be.”
“Yeah,” Winson said. “Makes it easier to rob us if we ain’t ‘round, right? Pa, we should knock him the hell off that horse and tie him up and bring him back to the baron. Probably has a whole bundle of asshole buddies in the woods waiting to drop on us.”
Daveon’s hand twitched and he had to stop himself from reaching for his sword. That wouldn’t help anything.
“What’d you say your name was?” Jaren asked.
“Therentell. Daveon Therentell.”
“Therentell,” Jaren said. “I know that name.”
“Rayen!” the younger son said. Daveon jumped. The kid had been creeping forward without Daveon noticing and when he spoke, the voice came from immediately behind him. “Rayen Therentell’s brother was named Daveon!”
“The Lindisfarne Therentells?” Jaren asked.
Daveon’s heart sank. He thought he could taste bile. Would it follow him everywhere? Were the lies as much a part of him as his own skin?
“A harpy’s tits twice over,” Winson spat.
“Dammit, Winson,” Jaren said.
“Yeah,” the younger son said. “The two who charged that tellich at the gap at Lindisfarne.” He smiled up at Daveon, his teeth standing crooked with black gaps between them. “You and your brother charged the tellich and held the Wretched back almost single handedly until the army could reach you!”
“Yeah, well…” Daveon said.
“Well, I’ll be,” Jaren said.
“Lindisfarne was a long time ago,” Daveon mumbled.
“And now you’re charging back on down to the wall?” Jaren asked. “Once wasn’t enough?”
“Just need my horses.” Daveon felt like a wet sock. But if this is what it took to get them to believe him, if they’d leave and not be taken by the Wretched, wasn’t the lie worth it?
