The Things We Bury

by Kaleb Schad

  He pulled a wooden cage from the stream, but it wasn’t the fish inside he thought about, his muscles moving as a puppet’s. It was her.

  The warm tickle of her breath on his neck. The shape of her thigh in the saddle. The fiery light rimming her hair.

  The choking fear he’d felt every time one of the thieves had swung a weapon at her. How desperately he wanted to save her. How desperately he wanted to run from her.

  Is it so easy then? Is Reyn so easily forgotten?

  He snagged a silver fish wider than it was long and flat wriggling from the cage. He had never learned the names for the types of fish. He called these Flatties and the others Yellow Tips because of their yellow faces.

  Back to her. Like the creek, his thoughts couldn’t be dammed. Back to her in the morning. Anaz hadn’t forgotten about Sunell, but he didn’t like being reminded of her. The young girl at the Stop and how somehow she had known. She had seen how scared Anaz was walking in there, to see people for the first time and she had been kind. She had invited Anaz into her world with nothing demanded, no challenges or wariness, just simple, honest kindness.

  And she’s going to die.

  Isabell will likely die.

  If this bone wall they spoke of was as terrifying as they said and if it was coming and would leave as much death behind it as they feared…

  He gave a short prayer of thanks to the hsing-li and to the spirit of the fish, then smashed it’s skull between two stone to stop its flapping. Kneeling there, he looked at the fish’s blood on the granite and the mushed skull and a still-whole eyeball. The blood shone so crimson it hurt to look at, the sun-bleached stone white enough to blind.

  White.

  Like bone.

  He thought about his sword, the one he’d used on his way out of Anathest. It was bundled with several knives and wrapped in oil cloth and tied tight and buried under his cabin. It would still be there.

  If he needed it.

  He looked up the hill towards his cabin. Past it.

  Out past the way Isabell had left.

  The bone wall.

  It was miles away and still the rolling osseous thunder could be heard. The particulars couldn’t be seen from her vantage, but Isabell didn’t know what was worse, seeing the individual components of bodies and bones slithering and clacking up and down the wall or seeing the massiveness of the thing all at once. The size of the thing sucked at any hope she may have seeded. Soldiers’ stories couldn’t scratch the magnitude of the horror before her. No wonder so few dared talk of it after returning from service. The wall was less white than she’d expected. Pink and brown flesh and hair still stuck to the skeletons gave it an almost stone-like appearance.

  Tens of thousands of black creatures scampered before the wall. Fletchers and Wallwraiths and Red Tails and all the Wretched, too many to be named. There were no banners. There were no horns or sounds of armies or cries of shared conviction, just misshapen forms of once-dead creatures now moving under infernal animation.

  Isabell had been to large cities before. She’d seen the walls of Herkshire and Alavince, walls so large you couldn’t be sure if man or god had made them. Tul Crafted walls. Yet, what embraced the entirety of creation before her made any wall she’d seen prior look as child’s play.

  But how could it be this far already? Her father had said a week, maybe two. She knew, once moving, the wall never held a pace for long, charging forward, covering ground at the pace of a horse, then slowing to a crawl at random moments. It was the least alien thing it did, yet the complete unpredictability of the thing crystalized a frigid fear within her.

  She tried to swallow, but her mouth wouldn’t work, everything inside of her a single, terrified knot. She wanted to be brave. She tried to tell herself that Ella Stonehome wouldn’t be afraid right now, that she had lived on the other side of that wall when she was only fourteen summers old and fought her way back to the human side. Even brought her little sister and a gnome minstrel with her.

  It didn’t matter. She might as well have told a mouse not to fear a hawk.

  I’m not Ella Stonehome. Oh gods, I’m not.

  Somewhere down there, she knew, were the Airim’s Lances. They would be in front of that thing, toe to toe with creatures that only lived in death. If she was going to join them, she would first need to find them.

  Down. There.

  She wished Anaz had come. She would have been grateful for someone to see this with her, to pretend at courage with her. If he’d been there, maybe if they each had been able to muster half their courage, together they would have been brave enough for one. As it was, Isabell wasn’t sure she could move.

  Domino snorted and stepped sideways.

  “Shh, girl,” Isabell said. She leaned to whisper in Domino’s ear. “They’re down there somewhere. We have to find the Lancers, help them.”

  Domino reared her head and snorted again.

  Something was wrong.

  “What is it?”

  She twisted in her saddle, scanning over her left shoulder. Over her right. Her hand grabbed her sword, started to draw it.

  She couldn’t see anything.

  “Let’s get—”

  She didn’t get to see the black shape before it struck her.

  32

  Taness had been wrong about the sun waiting for Daveon. It was well hidden, the last of its glow only hazing the skyline when he dropped down into a draw.

  Sweat caked Daveon’s body, despite an evening chill, and his heart hadn’t slowed the entire ride. All he could hear was Taness saying, I won’t leave them. That conviction. I won’t leave them. Monsole had been right. How could Daveon not have learned it yet, not have realized how deeply his wife and sons had branded him?

  Gods, why was he sweating like this?

  He needed to get home. He’d been wrong to leave them alone. He needed to get his horses and get home as fast as his poor beasts would carry him.

  Syla surged up out of the draw and onto Sket’s ranch, then pulled up short once into their pasture. She bucked her head as if she’d been punched by the smell. Everywhere, for as far as Daveon could see, lay swollen and jagged bodies of dead cattle. Hundreds with hides peeled back and stark white lances of ribs and cartilage jutting skyward. Tufts of sheep hair tumbled across the grass, carried by a soft wind and he realized there were a hundred or more smaller bodies mixed in with the cattle.

  Red walked up next to Daveon and lowered his head like he might eat, but stopped, sniffed the grass and lifted his head to look at Daveon. Even the grass was tainted by death.

  Daveon looked across the field towards the house. It was too far and too dark to see, but there was an orange glow of fire behind the house, silhouetting one edge of the dwelling and its thatch roof.

  He was ashamed to realize he wasn’t moving. Syla had no inclination to head into that field and he wasn’t so sure she was wrong.

  He was too late. It was obvious. Wolves don’t kill livestock like this, at this scale. The animals hadn’t been eaten. Simply eviscerated.

  But who was manning that fire? What if someone had survived? What if someone was laying there now holding himself together praying for help?

  And where were his horses?

  There wasn’t any real choice in the matter, Daveon knew. He drew his sword and nudged Syla forward.

  “Want another?” Alysha asked. It was only Elliot left tonight at the Stop.

  It had been a very quiet night, thankfully, with the last of the out-of-towners from market day heading on. Vincent and his family had come in for supper and there’d been the twins Marin and Marv and Elliot, of course, but otherwise not much. Two Fingers hadn’t even stuck around, thankfully. Alysha didn’t want to know where that half-orc had crawled off to, or into whose arms.

  She’d been late getting there. Nikolai had begged and clawed at her skirt when she’d tried to leave, even running out and unbuckling the saddle from Willow to keep Alysha from going. On and on he screamed about some ni
ghtmare he’d had and how she’d be hurt if she went to the Stop and how Daddy was fighting and had been hurt in his dream. She’d tried to be patient. She knew he was scared and he’d been working hard all day trying to cover what his pa should have been doing, but she’d also been fighting with Elnis the day long and in the end, she’d screamed at Nikolai to get his ass inside and go to bed. She’d used those words. Ass. To an eight summer boy. Thinking about it now filled her mouth with ash.

  Pile on the way Malic had hunted her all night, always finding some excuse to be next to her, always in front of her anytime she had to bend over to pick something up, his eyes zeroed in down her blouse, not even trying to hide it, and Alysha thought it was fair to say she was dreaming for her bed. Just don’t actually dream. Those have stolen your peace as surely as anything.

  “My old man would say a man can’t stand on one leg whenever someone offered him another drink,” Elliot said. He pushed himself away from the bar. “I’ve always said a man has a hard time standing on six.” He stumbled a little as he stepped back.

  Alysha laughed and came around the bar. She took his arm as they walked to the door.

  “How’re them little men of yours?” Elliot asked.

  He wasn’t young, almost old enough to be her father, and Alysha liked the way the skin wrinkled around his eyes when he smiled, something he did often. She almost regretted him leaving, but she was eager to clean up and head home. She’d wake Nikolai. She’d wake him and tell him how sorry she was.

  “They’re good,” she said. “Elnis was a handful this morning, but I guess that’s four-summer boys for you. I had to use the old ‘wait until your pa gets home’ threat, but…” She couldn’t say “but who knows when or if he will.”

  Elliot chuckled. “Cartner, my oldest, I remember he was never much for listening or caring about any whoopin’s. First time I’d spanked him, you know what he did? He laughed. Can you reckon that? A three year old laughing at a swat.”

  “Sounds like a tough kid.”

  “Yeah. He was.”

  Something nagged at Alysha and then she realized Cartner had died in the Rot. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “It’s alright. So many taken it’s hard to remember who’s alive and who’s dead anymore.”

  They stood on the porch and looked at Elliot’s horse, a palomino tied to the hitching pole. He was a proud looking animal, broad shoulders and a nice slope to his back. She remembered when Elliot had bought the horse from Daveon’s father something like fifteen years back. She hoped Elliot would die before the horse. She couldn’t imagine after everything the old man had been through to have to go and bury an animal like that, too. It would be an extra little slap of cruelty.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” Elliot said. He stepped down off the porch, then turned to look up at her. “It’s been great having you around the Stop, a fresh face and all, but I miss your husband.”

  Alysha smiled. “I do too.”

  Inside, Malic stood in the doorway to the kitchen, drying a bowl. He watched her walk across the Stop and go behind the bar and start wiping down the dulled wooden surface. Alysha picked up several mugs off the bar and dropped them into a bucket of water and when she turned around Malic was standing there. He’d set the bowl and towel down. Alysha was penned in behind the bar. He was blocking the only way out.

  He stepped forward and his eyes said something in a language Alysha understood, a language maybe every woman understands, and it said run.

  “So,” Malic said. He was rubbing at his withered left hand. “When is Daveon returning?”

  “Any day now,” she said. She stepped back and then cursed herself. Don’t show fear.

  “Are you sure?” Malic stepped forward. “I wonder if you’ve ever had a real man in your life?”

  Alysha couldn’t keep from stepping back.

  Malic, again, stepped towards her. “Maybe I’ll show you.”

  He didn’t tie up his horses, but he did keep Red’s lead rope tied to Syla. He wasn’t going to stay here a second longer than he needed to and didn’t want to have to worry about chasing down his horses one at a time if things got scattered and he needed to run.

  His palm was slick against the sword hilt. He switched his grip and wiped his hands on his pants and tried to manage his sawing breath.

  He pushed open the front door. It had come off its top hinge and hung canted so that it dragged in the packed earth floor. The Sket home was big, had to be with so many kids. The sweet stench of rotting meat and shit punched him. Daveon found a flint and candle on the table and lit it.

  There, lying next to the table was half of Barlin Sket. The top half. His two legs had been chewed off up to the groin, tattered black cloth trailing behind him. He’d dragged himself toward the door. Behind him, leading out of the bedrooms was the trail of entrails and all the bits that make a man. Daveon swallowed as Taness’s stew acted like it might come up. The candle light danced and he tried to keep his hands from trembling so violently.

  One step, then another. To the bedrooms. Did he want to? He wasn’t sure he was thinking about it. Want wasn’t a word with meaning anymore. Nor duty, nor need. It was as if Daveon had fallen asleep and his body moved without direction.

  He pushed aside the curtain and found a half-destroyed wall of wooden chairs and stools and pots and cedar chests stacked on top of each other, barricading the room. They were shattered and debris lay scattered into the kitchen where Daveon stood and into the bedrooms themselves. There were two rooms, one large one to the left with a loft and a smaller one to the right where Barlin and his wife must have slept with the babies.

  Daveon made a clicking sound in his throat at the site in the larger bedroom. Four bodies lay half eaten and fully mutilated. Barlin’s boys. They ranged in age from six to sixteen. The oldest was closest to the door. They’d all armed themselves, even the youngest, with swords and hatchets and knives and there was the black ichor of Wretched blood in the room, but no bodies of the creatures. Daveon looked away as fast as he could, the site of the six year old’s concave skull seared into his eyes.

  His pulse hammered in his ears. Every hair on his scalp tingled.

  His sword slipped from his hand. It thudded in the dirt and Daveon dropped it a second time when he tried to pick it up and he cussed.

  He moved over to the smaller bedroom. Inside was a larger mattress on wooden slats and a basinet with a white crumpled blanket. There were no bodies in here. No sign of struggle. He was about to leave when he saw something in the corner and turned back. A hole. In the wall. Someone had been in here and had hacked their way out through the wall.

  Where are the girls?

  They’d taken the girls.

  33

  Please don’t be dead was the only thing Anaz could think. Twenty yards beneath him lay Isabell, a crisscross of calcified mucus netted around her. She wasn’t moving, but her eyes were open.

  Anaz had caught Domino a quarter mile out. She’d been slashed on the back of her neck and her eyes lolled wildly when Anaz came near her, but he’d been able to slowly calm the beast, then tie it to a tree.

  Strange noises had drawn him forward. He’d crawled to a small outcropping, laid on his belly and looked over the ledge. That’s when his guts had knotted and wouldn’t let go.

  Six creatures milled around Isabell. They clicked and dragged out wet sounds that must have been speech, waving their arms towards each other and Isabell. Two dead ones lay near her and her sword was smeared black with their blood.

  The one closest was man-sized and wearing man clothing, a long black cloak with a hood pulled deep and a rusted and dented plate pauldron tied over his left shoulder. A pale skull hid just inside the hood. Steel loops and rings pierced the brow and cheeks, chains and silk ribbons dangling from the creature’s face. An eerie pale blue glow lit the underside of the skull, the light coming from the torso of the creature. He held a falchion, one side of the sword chiseled into a serrated edge.

&
nbsp; The other creatures were nothing like the Wallwraith. Each was an amalgamation of detritus—odd pieces of flesh and throbbing organs and rigid skeletal remnants and iron tools and clothing. They looked as if a ball of flesh had rolled around a battlefield, bits of the newly dead globbing together into a macabre lump of dough, then pressed and shaped into a bipedal demon. They stood hunched like dogs who’d grown to walk on two hind legs and their faces had impossibly large maws, lined with hundreds of thin teeth longer than Anaz’s hand. A wetness glistened over the curved shapes, starlight reflected in it.

  Anaz had seen monsters before. The mountains he grew up in, the things Ascenics were born fighting against—the very reason Ascenics were the warrior breed they were—were horrifying and brutal. Yet, he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen horrors like these.

  Now he understood. The villagers’ fear. Daveon’s stories and the courage it must take to face such creatures. Isabell’s desperation to help.

  Isabell. She couldn’t be dead.

  You don’t throw a net over a dead animal.

  One of the Fletchers hunched over her and pulled her up onto its shoulder like a sack of grain. The webbing crackled with the movement. The Wallwraith pointed away, towards the bone wall and clicked something at the Fletcher.

  Anaz tried to settle himself. Whatever had happened and would happen was as the hsing-li demanded. His place wasn’t to question, only to move when it was time to move. And looking at these…things…it was time to move. He’d made a promise to Reyn’s memory never again to harm a mortal creature, but he was sure of one thing. These creatures were not mortal. They were not meant for this world.

  He opened himself to the hsing-li and felt the raw power course into him, a marrow of strength and purpose filling his bones. Everywhere around him, all things living and inert, became part of him. He was them and they were him.