The Things We Bury

by Kaleb Schad

  “You live,” the baron said to Isabell.

  He lifted her from her horse and she winced.

  Sunell and the villagers poured into the bailey behind them, circling the soldiers, breathing heavy from running.

  “The wall, Father,” Isabell said. “We’ve seen it.”

  “You’re hurt,” he said.

  “My lord,” Nattic said, “She was unconscious when we saved her.”

  “The Wretched—” Isabell said

  “Saved?” the baron spoke over her.

  “Father, listen to me, the wall!”

  “She looked to put up a fight, my lord,” Nattic shouted.

  “It’s days away!” Isabell screamed.

  “The fiend was gravely injured,” Nattic said, “but we’d caught him stealing her and her horse. No telling what he’d have done if we hadn’t stopped him in time.”

  “You lying swine,” Isabell hissed at Sir Nattic.

  A clamor stirred in the crowd. Someone shouted, “Days?”

  “This is how you repay my mercy?” the baron growled at Anaz.

  “Your daughter is telling you something you should listen to,” Anaz said, his voice peaceful inside the hsing-li. “I have fought the Wretched. They follow us. They are not something your men can stop. Let these good people flee.”

  The baron charged them so suddenly the horse shied sideways.

  He tore Anaz from the saddle ont his back, the air blasting out in a clenching seizure. Anaz rocked inside the hsing-li letting the woolen peace wrap him even as the sudden panic from the crowd washed up against him.

  “No!” Isabell cried.

  He can only hurt your body. Only you can hurt your soul, he chanted to himself.

  The baron kicked him and he rolled onto his stomach coughing. The baron straddled him, lifted Anaz’s head by the chin. The sound of a blade being drawn.

  “He saved me,” Isabell cried. “I went to see the wall, to find the Airim’s Lances, to show you how close it was. The Fletchers had me and he saved me. He killed them.”

  Anaz waited for the blade. Maybe it was time. Maybe it would be okay for it to finish its work.

  “Mercy is for women in times of peace. I should have remembered that,” the baron said.

  Far away, back in the village, someone screamed. Then another.

  The blade touched Anaz’s throat. Stopped.

  Soon, a dozen voices, maybe more, shouted and cried from the town square.

  The blade eased away from Anaz’s throat.

  40

  It had been eight years since Evan Malic had felt this angry at life and wasn’t at all surprised to find Daveon Therentell at the center of it all.

  There the fucker was, sitting on that bay of his, a little blond girl all full of mud and fear in front of him, three extra horses behind him. Tied to that sumpter horse was something Malic had never thought he’d have to see in this life—the decapitated head of a Fletcher. He knew that’s what it was. How could it be anything but? All those years in the Falcon’s Sweep, all those raids they’d pulled, and Malic had never had to face a Wretched and that was just how he’d wanted it. Now this fucker, this Therentell fucker, had brought one to him.

  “Stop screaming,” Malic shouted. He stormed across the courtyard and out into the street. Daveon had stopped in the town square. He was dismounting now and pulling the girl down. She couldn’t be much more than eight summers, probably the same age as Daveon’s oldest whelp.

  One of the women who’d been wailing her gods-damned lungs out stopped when Malic cuffed her against the back of her head. Her husband, Rickton Westwind, shouted something, but Two Fingers shouldered him aside.

  “It’s coming,” Daveon shouted over the crowd. “The king’s messenger was mistaken, the wall is closer than he’d said. A week, maybe less.”

  “How do you know?” someone shouted.

  “The Skets. I went there to get back two horses I’d studded out.” He glanced at the girl, paused to choose his next words. “There were Fletchers there. They’d destroyed…everything. Fletchers. At the Skets already. If they’re there, you know the wall isn’t more than a week behind them.”

  “Now hold on here,” Malic called. He held his hands up and Two Fingers roared. For a half-orc, he’d snagged the better part of that breed’s throat. The square fell silent.

  “Daveon,” Malic said, “it’s good to see you. Was getting worried.”

  “Evan,” Daveon said, “the wall, it’s right behind me.”

  “Now just stop that nonsense. What you’re settin’ down folks don’t need to be picking up.”

  “Is that Miria Sket?” Elliot called out. The bar tumor had followed Malic and Two Fingers out of the Stop. Malic shot him a glare, but the old man didn’t see it or didn’t care, take your pick. “Where’re the others?”

  “It is, Good Elliot,” Daveon said. “The Sket family…” He shook his head.

  He kept looking out over the entire crowd. Malic thought he might actually be enjoying the attention. With that wench Isabell and her plaything (though he’d looked like he’d lost whatever game they’d been at) riding through just moments ago, half the damn town was out and circling them. Malic needed to shut this down and right quick. Whatever that thing was on Therentell’s sumpter horse and whatever it meant for Fisher Pass, Malic knew he wasn’t going to let it split apart at the seams now. Not when he and Two Fingers’d just started settling in.

  “You got a story to tell, I can see that,” Malic said. “But you—”

  “I killed two of them,” Daveon shouted over him.

  “Two!” someone shouted. It was that dwarf, Gareth, and Malic could see he was right impressed.

  “The Skets. Not all of them?” a woman said. She held a hand over her mouth.

  “But the Baron said the wall had turned.” Another woman’s voice, but Malic missed who.

  “He what?” Daveon looked as if the ground was shifting beneath his feet.

  “Aye he did and I say we wait for him to tell us what to make of this,” Malic said, seeing his opening. “Therentell here may have stumbled across a scout party or a—”

  “Scouting what?” Gareth shouted.

  “—or a Fletcher wandered off from his fellows,” Malic said, his voice climbing.

  “Two, I say,” Daveon said. Miria looked up at him.

  “And I say I see one head,” Two Fingers said.

  “Don’t matter none.” Malic patted Two Fingers’s arm. “Two he says and that’s two more than I’d want to face.” If he had to pat Daveon’s bruised baby ego to get this shit over with, he’d do just that. “Either way, two Fletchers don’t make an invasion. The king says the wall is turned and moving on, then that’s what I believe until the king and our baron says otherwise.”

  “It turned once,” Gareth shouted. “It can turn again. That’s enough for me to know when to say when.”

  “Ain’t nobody leaving town,” Malic shouted.

  “Look at that thing,” a woman cried. It was Tenera Henslove and her husband and twelve-summer boy. She pointed at the Fletcher’s head with a trembling hand. The head was ghastly, that’s for sure, half again as large as a man’s with no eyes and no nose, only a hard, knobby shell and a mouth that half-circled the face. Black blood had painted the sumpter horse’s hind leg, giving it a coated shine that reflected the torchlights and bloody sunset. “Those things,” Tenera said, “if they’re coming, we can’t be here. We can’t fight them.”

  “Dammit, I say,” Malic shouted, “Ain’t nobody leaving. If Daveon here can fight one—”

  “Two,” Daveon said.

  “—two and ride home unscathed, we can too.”

  “But he’s a Therentell,” Elliot called out.

  Daveon smiled at his old bar friend. Malic wanted to put his fist through both of their faces. Or have Two Fingers do it.

  “Evan’s right,” Cassius Finnian called out. He slurred his words, but right now Malic would take a drunk’s word as long a
s it was pointing in the right direction. “We’s wait until our Lord Baron Blackhand tells us what way things tilt.”

  Tenera Henslove stepped towards Daveon. “I can take the girl, if you’d like. Get her cleaned up.” Then to the girl, “Sweetie, can I warm you up? Get you out of those clothes?”

  Miria clutched at Daveon’s leg, pressing her full body up against it and burying her face in his waist. Daveon rested his hand on her head and gave Tenera a sad smile. “She can stay with us for now,” Daveon said. Then he looked at her and at Malic and Malic could tell the reality of the situation was starting to settle in around him. That girl was another mouth to feed, another body to clothe, at a time when the man couldn’t clothe his own. That got Malic thinking about Alysha and what she might tell Daveon when he got home. He weren’t too worried none about it, wasn’t nothing this horse-fucker could do about boo, but all the same, he should probably make sure Daveon understood how things stood. Best way to keep this town together was to keep it stepping forward just as if nothing were happening.

  Daveon wouldn’t have been able to say why he’d lied about how many Fletchers he’d killed, as if one wasn’t enough, but the lie had just slipped out and once out he couldn’t take it back. Maybe that’s what happened when you spent most nights lying to your fellows while behind the bar. Maybe one lie greased the way for the next and soon you couldn’t stop them before they were flinging themselves past your lips. It was just that, with all those people there, looking at him and that bright blend of fear and awe, he’d felt something he’d never felt before in his life. They were seeing him. They weren’t seeing his pa or his brothers, they were seeing him. Daveon Therentell.

  It didn’t matter. Done was done. And besides, he had more important things to worry about, like what he was going to find when he got home. He set Miria in the saddle and climbed up behind her.

  “I have to get home,” he said to the folks still standing nearby.

  Once he’d seen Fisher Pass unmolested, much of the fear for his own family had simmered back to a low boil, but until he laid eyes on the three of them he wouldn’t be at peace.

  Without a sound, Two Fingers was at his horse, gripping the reins.

  “Hold up a moment, son,” Malic called. Son? Malic was barely older than Daveon. Two Fingers smiled at Miria, his lower tusks thrusting upward and barnacle yellow. Miria clutched at Daveon’s legs.

  Malic walked up next to Daveon and waved him down. Daveon dismounted. They were alone now in the square, most of the others already back to their own homes or clustered in small groups whispering to each other around the market square.

  “What’s the game?” Malic whispered.

  “Game?”

  “You didn’t kill no Fletcher, much less two of them.”

  “This isn’t some deer shed I found in the woods, Evan.” Daveon rapped his knuckles on the Fletcher’s head. He didn’t like to even touch it.

  “That don’t mean you killed it,” Malic said. “What I’m figuring is you come across some battleground. King’s men were here before that wall turned, maybe, and you found this and now you’re stirring up fear and panic in your fellows. And I figure only reason you might do something like that is you’re hunting reasons to run.”

  Daveon couldn’t believe what he was hearing. What kind of a person did Malic think he was?

  Malic stepped forward and Daveon had to step back, but Two Fingers was there and he pushed Daveon back towards Malic. Daveon looked over his shoulder at the half-orc, then at Malic. His heart beat against his ribs.

  “Malic,” Daveon said, “don’t be—”

  “You yellow-belly outta’ here, you best leave a sack of coin on my porch before you go,” Malic said.

  Daveon swallowed. “Malic, the Wretched are coming.”

  “And if you haven’t repaid me, they best find you here working when they do.”

  The world was ending and this piece of…whatever…was worried about meeting his death with a sack full of senits?

  “You’ll get your fucking money,” Daveon said. He turned his head and spit and he could feel beads of sweat tickling down his ribs and he couldn’t be sure it was because of the summer heat. After everything. After all of that, to be back in the same spot as if nothing had changed. Daveon wanted to scream.

  “I heard Blackhand once indentured a man’s wife when the man failed to meet a money obligation. Six years.” Malic smiled and patted Daveon on the shoulder. “Alysha worked the Stop a couple nights while you were gone. She’s pretty…good. I’d rather have the coin, but at least she’ll come on trained if it turns that way.”

  Daveon could feel his gorge rise. Something dry and bitter in his nostrils. His wife. She’d been here. With Malic. Airim save them, he needed to get home. He climbed into his saddle and Malic walked back to his inn.

  “Oh,” Malic called, “tell Alysha she can keep the knife.”

  41

  Something had told Anaz, when he’d seen the gallows and the hanged man, and the pit-prisons with the metal grates over them, that before he left town he’d be in one of them. His whole life it seemed, whether in the mountains with the Ascenics or battling in the Pit in Abaleth, was moving from one hole in the ground to another. One grave to another?

  Certainly Anaz felt like he was dying. Whatever had infected him was moving from a small burn to a full inferno. He tried standing, but a wash of white swept across his eyes and he slumped against the earth wall and slid back to the bottom. He could feel the detritus of corpses under him. Men and women who had been sentenced to death in these cells, then left to rot and sink into the muck. He hadn’t let go of the hsing-li in hours, yet he wasn’t sure he had enough strength to lift himself out of this hole and raise that metal grate across the top. The catalogue of exhaustion and injury ticked away all the reasons he should simply sleep in here tonight. He’d slept in worse conditions. A few hours and he’d be ready to slip away.

  “Anaz,” a voice whispered. He opened a single eye and looked up and saw the young girl, Sunell, kneeling over the grate. Her hair fell down on either side of her face blocking what little torchlight could reach it. She was holding something for him, her tiny arm squeezing through the bars. A lump of cheese. As if he could smell it over the wet death he was sitting in, his stomach twitched.

  “Catch,” she whispered, then released it. He pushed off the wall and snatched the cheese a moment before it hit the dirt, but then spilled face first into the muck, his head throbbing. He could feel Sunell watching him as he tried to sit up.

  “Just hang on,” she said. She looked up at something above, then hurriedly said, “Isabell says you saved her. She’s not going to let you die in here, Anaz, I promise. She said to tell you that I was right, which, of course I was, but she said you’d probably want to hear it anyway, so I’m telling you. I was right. You just hang on.”

  She crawled away from the edge of the grate and Anaz kept looking up at where she had been and at the stars that now filled her space and he breathed the air of the dead and he touched the cold of the earth and he thought that maybe this was indeed a grave and that maybe, maybe, a part of him did need to die.

  Elnis reached him first, his tiny legs pumping, a chant of “Daddy home, Daddy home, Daddy home” screeching across the darkness like a beacon, guiding Daveon to shore. Miria sat up at the sight of the boy and he could feel her breathing quicken. But not so much as Syla’s step. And Red’s and the two stallions. Red was almost pushing Syla, he’d creeped up so tight on her. It was home. They were ready for home.

  Daveon dropped off Syla and lifted Miria and set her down, scooped up Elnis and hugged him to his chest, a hand holding the boy’s head tight as if he could swallow the child and protect him eternally in his body. Then he set Elnis down.

  Alysha was next. He turned to her. Gods, she’s more beautiful than I remembered. How was it possible he’d already forgotten what she looked like?

  Nikolai’s young form cut the light in the doorway behind her
.

  As if testing each step to be sure it was real, not trusting her eyes, she eased her way off the porch.

  “You got them,” she said.

  “Right where I left them.” He gave her the most charming crooked grin he could muster. The kind of smile that had worked when they were kids. Before the world had torn at them.

  They stood there, Alysha and Daveon, with nothing between them but moonlight and maybe love? Was there still a lead rope of love that one of them could tug on toward the other?

  In answer, Alysha surged forward, her face dissolving into tears and a hard gasp. They crashed into each other. Man and woman. Husband and wife. And Daveon knew that he had left half of himself behind when he’d abandoned them, knew he would never do so again. Monsole was right. The mark was truly burned into his heart.

  Nikolai turned back into the cabin. Closed the door.

  The screams start almost as soon as the sandfury is set free. First the sorcerers holding it in place, then the Blockers. Gone. Not even fabric remains. Anaz watches the person in front of him, an elf man with grey, whispy hair, dissolve into a pink puddle and bits of him spray across Anaz’s cheeks, the sweet smell of rotting meat punching into him. Another woman, next to the man, bursts. Then the stone bench they sat on crumbles into pebbles and dust. Everywhere they are screaming. They are clawing over each other, driving their feet and their hands into anything they can grip, lunging and reaching and always the screaming. In the Pit, hanging on Reyn is himself. He floats there and he looks at Anaz in the stands. Why isn’t he doing something? Why isn’t the Hero of the Pit doing something? Anaz turns to the woman sitting next to him and it is also Reyn. She is looking at him. She isn’t smiling, only looking. Another woman holding a baby explodes, no, not explodes, rather falls into nothingness and the baby tumbles from her arms and its head pops on a bench and then it too melts and the swaddling blanket drifts like a leaf loosed in grace. And Reyn looks at him. And the Anaz in the Pit looks at him.