The Things We Bury

by Kaleb Schad

  Well, as he was fond of saying, nothing stayed the same forever, no matter how much you tried.

  Lightning rippled across the horizon, chased by thunder several seconds later.

  “You start digging,” Malic said. “I’ll get coins in the wall.”

  “Everyone out,” Malic growled.

  Alysha thrashed and heaved against the rope, but Malic held it tight and she was only burning red rings into her wrists.

  “Right fucking now!” he shouted.

  That old bastard, Elliot, was at the bar along with Palson. Missinell had been tending the place for Malic. Normally, he’d never have put that ditz in charge of cleaning stables, but he’d needed someone and she’d been around.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” Elliot said as he stood. He wore his sword, just as the baron had ordered all men do, but Malic wasn’t worried. Even right handed, he could take an old man like that.

  “Elliot!” Alysha cried. She heaved again on her rope, but her feet gave out from under her in the sunflower seed husks and she thumped to the floor.

  “Get!” Malic said. “Get! All of you. Anyone not out of here at the count of three gets a knife in the guts. One…”

  Missinell set a bowl she’d been holding on the bar, pulled up her skirts and ran for the front door. Palson tried to save some of his dignity, but did likewise, an awkward, hustling, skating movement.

  Elliot looked at Malic and Alysha.

  “Two,” Malic said.

  He walked towards the door, slowly, one hand resting on his sword.

  “He says Daveon didn’t pay, but he did, Elliot,” Alysha cried. “He did and Malic knows it and he’s told Nattic that Daveon didn’t and he’s taking me and the kids, Elliot, the kids are still at the house and Daveon is gone and—”

  Malic pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket and jammed it into Alysha’s mouth. “Until you learn to stop lying,” he said, “I may not let you speak for awhile.” He looked at Elliot. “Three.”

  Elliot looked at Malic for a long time, then at Alysha and then down at his feet and Malic knew he’d won.

  Elliot turned and walked to the door.

  Alysha sobbed around the handkerchief.

  There wasn’t a way to describe the relief Daveon felt when he saw his home. A thunderstorm had rolled overhead on their sprinting journey and he was soaked through and covered in mud, making them more of swamp creatures than rider and horses.

  The relief started to dribble away, however, as he approached his house. The wagon was there, packed and ready to go, with the harness laid out, but Alysha’s bags were laying in the mud, open, their contents strewn every which way.

  Daveon scanned the pastures. A strobe of lightning brought the fields into blue contrast and he saw nothing. Nobody was out there. The rubble from the barn sizzled in the rain and he saw some of the boards had been dragged from the pile and tossed to the side. He saw why when he looked at the house. Half-blackened lumber had been nailed to the front of the door, across the windows.

  “Alysha?” Daveon called.

  He loosely tied the piebald and Red to the hitching pole.

  He drew his sword.

  “Nikolai?”

  A hiss of lightning and cracking thunder above him. A pounding within him.

  If the Wretched were here, they would still be here, chewing on the dead, crafting new Fletchers from the corpses. This isn’t Wretched, so what is it?

  He stepped up onto the porch and beat against the barricaded boards.

  “Alysha!” he screamed.

  And then…

  Listen...

  As if Airim himself had breathed into Daveon, his body inflamed with hope and terror, he heard his son’s voice.

  “Daddy?” Nikolai cried.

  “Nikolai?”

  Someone pulled at something inside the house, behind the door.

  Daveon dropped his sword and gripped one of the boards and heaved. It came away with a screeching sound. Another.

  “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.” It was Elnis.

  “I’m coming,” Daveon called. Another board loose. Enough for him to squeeze through, but the door was jammed. He stepped back, then lunged and kicked and his left knee roared its fury, but the door moved. One more time and it was open.

  He grabbed his sword, weaved between the barricades and the door and into his house. Before he could fully find his feet, the kids were on him—even Miria—crying deep, terrified sobs, their arms wrapped around his legs and his hips, heedless of the mud and blood. Daveon dropped his sword and wrapped his arms around the three of them, his own tears mingling with the dripping rainwater coming off his hair.

  They were okay. They were here. They were okay. The Wretched hadn’t reached them yet. There was only one thing Daveon found himself saying over and over, a prayer, a real prayer, for the first time, to the god he’d thought had abandoned him long ago: Thank you. Thank you for these arms around me, for these matted heads pressing against him, for their precious voices calling him the only name that he’d ever earned that mattered, “Daddy.”

  But he wasn’t whole yet.

  When he could speak, he said, “Where’s your mother?”

  “They what?” Daveon said. He’d heard the words, but it was as if they kept bouncing against an invisible wall while trying to get into his mind. His wife. Taken.

  A furious heat radiated up from his bowels to his arms. He stretched his fingers wide. Oh, how he wanted Evan Malic’s head inside his grip at that moment. He’d crush it like an egg.

  “Nik-lie stabbed!” Elnis said and he mimicked the motion with an exaggerated lunge.

  Daveon noticed his dagger strapped to Nikolai’s waist for the first time.

  “Who did you stab?”

  “Mac,” Elnis said.

  “Malic,” Nikolai corrected. He looked at the floor as he said it.

  “You stabbed Evan Malic?” He kept from smiling, seeing how shaken his children were.

  “In the butt!” Elnis said and he laughed.

  Miria had stepped back from them after the hug, her hands clenched tight into a ball in front of her and when Daveon glanced at her she gave a small nod.

  He saw now the ugly bruise climbing up the side of Nikolai’s face. He took his son’s chin in his hand and turned the bruise towards him. “He do this to you?”

  Nikolai nodded. “Is Mr. Malic going to die?” he asked.

  The boy’s guilt radiated like a fire.

  His precious children. Even after everything, after watching their mother be kidnapped and dragged away screaming, they felt guilty for hurting the bad men. There was beauty in that innocence, Daveon decided, but it was for another time, or maybe for them. It was not for him. He would not be innocent tonight. He had abandoned his wife and let this happen to her and his children, but he would not let it go unpunished. Evan Malic and his half-orc would never terrorize his or anyone’s family ever again.

  “Yes he is,” he said.

  Nikolai looked up at him in horror.

  He pulled his son back into a hug. “But not from you. You did good, son.”

  “What about Mom?” Nikolai said.

  “We’re going to go get her right now.”

  “What about Malic?”

  “And Two Figgers,” Elnis said.

  And burn anything that stands in your way.

  “They want to play with fire, they’re going to feel some heat,” Daveon said.

  Elliot stood on the porch of the Sunflower Stop and watched that half orc work. He had a spade and was knee deep in the ground, near the far corner of the Stop, a dark shape emerging from the earth. His greatsword lay in the grass next to him. He hadn’t seen Elliot come out. It had started raining and Elliot watched a purple arc of lightning cut the darkness, felt the thunder in the porch’s floorboards.

  “Fucking rain,” Two Fingers growled to himself. The shovelfuls of mud made fat slapping sounds.

  Inside, Elliot could hear Alysha crying. He watched the
half orc and his hand picked at the leather banding around the hilt of his sword and he looked at the horses in the rain and he thought of Daveon.

  He thought of his daughter, Lila. This wasn’t a story he wanted to tell her tonight. It wasn’t a story he wanted to tell anyone, most especially Airim.

  But he was too old. He hitched the sword belt and even that small movement made his shoulder burn, the tendons inside grumbling.

  Two Fingers’s shovel scraped against something hard.

  “Fucking go a little fucking deeper next time, Malic,” the half orc muttered.

  Inside, Alysha had somehow removed the rag from her mouth and said something to Malic. He couldn’t hear what, but he could hear the rippling lava in her voice. The pressing hatred. The fear.

  He drew his sword, a slow, labored movement and the tip caught in the scabbard and he had to use his other hand to pull the sheath away and free the sword.

  “Therentell,” he muttered as he reached for the door, “am I going to have a story for you.”

  Alysha sat on the floor tied to a metal hook in the hearth and felt the cool night air skimming along the ground before she heard the door open. Her heart leapt into her mouth when she saw Elliot, sword in hand, grey hair flattened with rain.

  Malic turned and rolled his eyes when he saw Elliot. “That’s one thing I won’t miss from this town,” he said. “The foolhardy, all-in-your-business, nobility.”

  “You need to let Miss Therentell go,” Elliot said.

  “I already counted to three.”

  “Oh thank Airim,” Alysha said. “Thank Airim. Help me, Elliot.”

  “I aim to, Miss Therentell,” he said.

  Alysha thought she could hear his voice shaking. The sword tip vibrated. He looks so old. Her breath caught in her chest as he walked into the room. He moves so old, too.

  Malic reached over the bar and straightened up holding a knife, maybe a hand’s length of blade.

  Alysha, for the first time in what seemed like days, felt hope. Elliot might be old, but he had a full-length sword.

  “I don’t give second chances,” Malic said. “And, frankly, I’ve been thinking of taking a cup of your blood in payment for all the food that idiot Therentell snuck you over the months, anyway.”

  “You know something?” Elliot said. “I liked this place a lot more when Kid Connor were running it.”

  “Kid Connor liked it a lot better then, too, but, like you, he didn’t know when to take a fair offer and run.”

  Alysha hadn’t even seen him come in. How could something that big move that silently? “Elliot!” she screamed. “Behind—”

  Elliot barely turned in time to see Two Fingers already on the down swing with his blade. The greatsword whooshed from one side of Elliot to the other, his tunic tangling in the explosion as it came through. As Elliot’s world came apart, Alysha could see his eyes tracking his legs and bowels kiting through the air away from him.

  63

  As soon as Essen had his back to her, Isabell sat up. Already her head was clearing from the Mistress Syrup. She let it hang, though, as if still woozy, exhausted from the poison.

  Thunder rumbled outside and she smelled the rain against the stone tower.

  She watched Essen work at the concoction. Another man, an agent of her father’s, telling her what to do, domesticating her, breaking her, like a beast. Never again.

  He took a glass chalice from the vanity and poured water into it.

  There was only one man who’d never tried to force her into being something she wasn’t supposed to be. Sure, he’d tried to dissuade her from going to the wall, but he’d never tried to force her. He was the only one who had ever allowed her to be who she was supposed to be, who loved—yes, loved—her as she was, who wanted nothing from her.

  And he was in the Maw.

  With Sunell. Poor, beautiful little Sunell. The idea of the girl being tortured sent copper shivers through Isabell’s guts.

  Essen tapped a similar amount of powder—cat’s root, if Isabell wasn’t mistaken—into the mug and again swirled it with his finger.

  “There,” he said, holding the chalice before him, examining the consistency through the glass. “So much activity. Near hysteria around here lately what with the wall and the traitors and the ungrateful townsfolk. But this will help all that, don’t you worry. A good long sleep and when you wake it’ll be like waking in an entirely new world.” He smiled at her as he approached.

  Isabell swayed, then lurched forward, as if fainting. Essen cried out and bent to catch her, his chin protruding towards her…exactly as she wanted. She thrust herself upwards from the bed, the crown of her head cracking into his chin. His head snapped back, the chalice flipping away end over end, cat’s root and water sparkling in the torchlight. He was unconscious before he hit the ground.

  Isabell knelt and touched his chest, feeling for his heartbeat. It was there. She hadn’t killed him.

  She stood and bunched up her wedding gown and tore at the ends in one long spiraling undoing. Once the hem was above her knees and she knew she could move freely, she ripped off the strung out fabric and began wrapping it around her palms.

  To the door. She closed her eyes and begged Airim to forgive her for what she was about to do, but it was now or never. Her father’s men had made their choice. They knew what kind of a man he was. They knew what they had done to their own souls when they’d sworn to serve him.

  With all the years of sneaking out, she eased open her door so silently, so slowly, that the guard never sensed a thing.

  She looped the bridal garrote over the guard’s head and pulled it tight. She kicked one bare foot into the back of his knee and they fell backwards into her room, his chainmail clawing at her through the dress. He grunted and reached up to the white fabric and tried desperately to weasel his fingers under it, but it was too far buried.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  He kicked and they pinwheeled along the floor.

  Isabell’s hands were white, the dress cutting deep into her flesh.

  “I’m sorry.”

  The slop bucket skittered under her bed. Stench of vomit.

  The guard kicked Essen.

  Isabell’s shoulders burned from pulling.

  Gurgling scratching sounds in the guard’s throat.

  Then silence. Stillness.

  A rumbling moan of thunder.

  She rolled the body off of her, looked at him. She knew him, though not his name. He’d been nice enough to her, though too afraid of her father to talk to her.

  She picked up his sword.

  She felt sorry for killing him, but she knew one thing. He wouldn’t be the last person she killed tonight.

  64

  “Hold on,” Malic said to her. “Fall and you’ll wish you hadn’t. We’re going to ride hard until we’re good and clear of this shit hole.”

  Malic kicked his horse out from the Stop. He’d tied a rope around her neck and the other end to his saddle, so that if she tried to jump or fall off she’d only risk killing herself. He’d tied her hands to the saddle as well. Not that he’d let her fall. Not with the way he held her, pressed up against every inch of her back.

  She didn’t care. She wasn’t thinking about Evan Malic right then. She was thinking about her kids. Nikolai. Elnis. Elnis’s laugh and the way he loved to run up to her while she cooked and punch her in the rear and then giggle and run away. Nikolai carrying buckets of water and threshing out stalls and feeding the horses and never a complaint, never a moment of whining. Just up and doing it, whatever she asked of him.

  Even Miria. The poor, poor girl. To lose her entire family, to watch them be slaughtered by creatures who have no right to exist and then to have her adoptive family taken to pieces. Taken to pieces first by themselves, then by Malic.

  Rain freckled her skin and she prayed a bolt of lightning would hit her or Malic or both of them, she didn’t care.

  She tried to twist the ropes around he
r wrist, but they were shrinking in the rain and getting tighter with every bit of struggle.

  Where was Daveon right now, she wondered. Would he ever come back? Would he ever know what had happened to his family? Would he ride home tonight and find his children…what? Dead? In the house dead from the Wretched? Who will find them? Someone has to find them. Why did she tell them to run? Because if she hadn’t, they’d be here with her now. Oh, she wanted her kids here with her now. Why did she tell them to run?

  And Elliot. Oh, poor Elliot. How could she have made him get involved like that? What had she done?

  “Did you see his legs?” Two Fingers called to Malic. “How they flew like that?” He whooped a loud laugh as they approached the village gates.

  Two of the garrison stepped into the road to block their path and Alysha started screaming. “Help me! He’s taking me! Help me!”

  Malic slowed his horse to a jog and flapped his crippled hand at the guards, “Get the fuck out of the way.”

  “Malic?” It was Benson, Nattic’s nephew. Alysha swallowed her screams. They would be useless.

  “Get out of the way!”

  “Where you going? What you doing with Therentell’s wife? The hell happened to your face?”

  Two Fingers drew his greatsword, but Malic put his hand out to stop the half-orc. “She’s been granted as payment for their loan,” Malic said. “Sir Nattic gave the order this evening. Now get the fuck out of the way!”

  “Fine. Okay,” Benson said. He stepped off the path and waved away the other soldier, a boy, barely a whisker to his lip. “Don’t have to be so pissy about it,” he muttered. “Not like we supposed to stop people from leaving town or anything. Not like we ain’t just doing our…”

  Alysha couldn’t hear the rest of Benson’s mumbling as Malic kicked his horse into a gallop.

  They charged through the gate and headed due north, along the same trail they’d just followed in from her home. They were heading in the right direction. She just had to stay calm, keep herself together and watch. Stay calm. Don’t be afraid.