The Things We Bury

by Kaleb Schad

  No more than a mile, maybe a mile and a half, from Fisher Pass, Malic’s horse turned suddenly, as if dodging a tree. Malic cussed roughly and pulled hard on Alysha to keep her in the saddle.

  “The fuck,” Two Fingers said, yanking his horse’s reins back so hard it bucked up on its hind legs.

  “No,” Malic whispered and Alysha could almost feel the fear on the back of her neck. “No, no, no.”

  “The fuck?” Two Fingers almost screeched it when he saw what Malic was looking at.

  She looked around, trying to see what they saw. And then she did. Black shapes hurdling down the road on four legs, bits of flesh and chains and fabric dangling behind them, an unholy union of dead parts made animate.

  The Wretched.

  Malic spun his horse back towards Fisher Pass.

  “You said you wouldn’t leave us,” Nikolai said. They were behind Henley’s butcher shop, off the road and hopefully hidden. Nikolai and Miria were on Red. Daveon and Elnis on the piebald. Daveon dropped out of the saddle and handed the reins to Nikolai.

  “I’m not,” he said and pointed at the Sunflower Stop a couple of buildings down. “I’m going in there, just right there. You wait here.”

  “What are you going to do?” Nikolai said.

  “Where’s Mommy?” Elnis said.

  “What’s going to happen in there,” Daveon said, “you don’t need to see that. You’ve seen enough. There are some things, once you put them in your head you can’t get them out ever again.”

  “I can…I could…” Nikolai couldn’t meet Daveon’s eyes when he finally managed to say, “…help?”

  Daveon thought he might be able to physically feel his heart breaking, the absolute strength it took his son to even say the words.

  “You are,” Daveon said. He reached over and drew the dagger out of Nikolai’s sheath and turned it in his hand so he could hand the blade to his son hilt first. “You be brave. Stay out here with your brother and Miria and you watch them. If you see anyone, you scream for me, okay?”

  Nikolai nodded. Daveon put his hand on the boy’s head and pulled him over and kissed his wet hair.

  Daveon crouched outside the Sunflower Stop’s wall and tested his knee. It didn’t work very well. Only a little range of motion and every step was more like a hobble and a prayer. However, when the time came, his knee—just like his sword arm—would work fine. It had to.

  He couldn’t hear anyone inside the Stop, but when he peaked through a crack in the wall he could see Elliot’s horse tied to the hitching pole. He crouched there, against the wall near the gate, and thought about what he was going to do. He visualized Two Fingers and Malic in the Inn, where they would probably be. He wasn’t going to talk to them. He wasn’t going to give the half-orc a chance to even stand, if he could help it. They’d talked enough. Their argument was no longer with words.

  The rain was a constant white noise punctuated by slaps of lightning and thunder.

  Through the gate and into the courtyard. Everything was muddy and slick. He limped to the porch as fast as his stiff knee would let him. Up each step. Hand on the door and shove. It flung open.

  It took Daveon a long moment to understand what he was seeing. Red paint had been splattered across the floor in loose, chaotic strands, mixing with the sunflower seed husks in a chunky soup. Lying on his back, looking at the ceiling, a sword still gripped in his hand, was Elliot. To his left, half-laying atop the trestle table, half dangling down onto the bench, were Elliot’s legs and waist and ripped ropes of bowels and organs.

  “No,” Daveon said.

  He spun to the corner, to where Two Fingers was probably sitting. The half-orc wasn’t there. He looked behind the bar. Nobody. To the other trestle table. Empty. The Sunflower Stop was empty.

  Alysha wasn’t here. They’d taken his wife. Evan Malic had taken his wife and they were gone and they’d killed his best friend. There was a limit to what a man could fathom in one day and Daveon could tell he was at his. It felt almost as if a lid were closing down over his mind, putting out its light.

  Blue blinding light sprayed into the Sunflower Stop and a crack of thunder shook the windows in their panes.

  And when the thunder rolled away into a soft grumbling between clouds, that’s when Daveon heard them.

  Heard his kids screaming.

  65

  “You probably won’t stay conscious through this.”

  “Please, Sir Nattic, I don’t know the answers you’re looking for.”

  The voices, a man’s, a girl’s, they were important to Anaz, but he couldn’t place them. Why was Hakkana torturing Reyn? Where were they?

  “But when you wake up, you’ll see what’s happened and you’ll feel it and then you’ll tell me.”

  “It was Anaz and me! I asked him to help me and we sneaked everyone out.”

  Not Reyn. Sunell. Miserable reality seethed into Anaz. His left hand throbbed. He tried to open his eyes, but one wouldn’t, a crust of something clinging it closed.

  There was something in his mouth. Thin and fleshy and tasted of copper.

  “Your idea,” Nattic said.

  “Please, Sir Nattic. It was us. Us.” Sunell could barely speak around the sobs.

  Anaz could smell blood and dried sweat. He tried to wiggle his left hand, but the pain made it impossible. He reached for the hsing-li. It answered. Hungrily. He forced open his eyes. Nattic stood between them, his back to Anaz, holding a cleaver in his right hand and a torch in his left. There was a tall table between them and laid out on it were a slew of Nattic’s torture tools, a saw, four or five knives, a pair of tongs. He could see Sunell’s face. She was looking at Nattic, her face a wrung towel of terror.

  He worked his mouth and spit out whatever Nattic had stuck there. It flopped onto the ground.

  “He wakes,” Nattic said and turned to look at him.

  “Sunell,” Anaz whispered.

  “Anaz!” Sunell half screamed.

  “What? You didn’t like the taste of that gag?” Nattic bent over and picked up the thing he’d had spit out. He held it up in front of him It was a finger. “You were yelling so much when I took it, I thought you could do with something to chew on.”

  Anaz looked at his left hand. His pinky was missing, red blood still shining in the wood grain of the table. He laid back and closed his eyes. So much pain. The Rot still sanded away the insides of his lungs and now his hand was a lump of agony.

  “I have to say, I expected more from you. I barely got the finger off and you were already out cold. I don’t have time for you to keep passing out. I need you two to give me some answers. So now I’m going to ask Sunell one last time and then I’m going to take her entire left hand. You can watch, stranger. After all, you did this to her.”

  He turned back to Sunell and bubbles of snot dribbled out of her nose as she cried. Shaking breaths.

  “Sunell,” Anaz said. “Sunell listen to me.”

  He pulled more of the hsing-li into him. It was ready. It had always been ready, but he hadn’t been listening. It sang with anticipation. His pain receded to a whisper.

  Sunell cracked open her eyes and tried to look at him.

  “You were right. I was wrong. I’ve always been wrong. The gods can do nothing without a mortal’s hands. They need us.”

  He reached into the floor with the hsing-li. into the wood under Sunell, seeking.

  “You’re right, mister,” Nattic said. “The gods need us more now than ever. They need their chosen men and women like Lord Baron Blackhand to lead this nation out of darkness.”

  He turned back to Sunell and raised the cleaver.

  Sunell shut her eyes.

  “And they need fire and fury visited upon those who doubt,” he said.

  He swung the blade and Anaz pushed, pushed with the hsing-li. The wood under Sunell’s wrist buckled and swelled and angled the edge of the strap up to meet the blade. The cleaver sliced through the leather, thunking into the wood beneath. The tip caug
ht Sunell, cutting deep. Blood rose quickly and she gasped.

  “What—” Nattic stood looking at the table, dumbfounded.

  “Now!” Anaz hissed.

  Sunell cranked her arm awkwardly and slipped the wrist free of the strap.

  “The knives!” Anaz shouted.

  A crash as she snatched up the first blade her hand found, the others flinging around and falling off the table with a rattle. She lunged as far off the table as possible and sliced the blade through Nattic’s apron and into his thick stomach. He screamed and crashed back into Anaz.

  He rolled off of Anaz and scrambled out from between the tables, looking around the Maw for something.

  “Hurry,” Anaz shouted. He tracked Nattic and reached into the hearth. He found a log willing to fly and flung it at the knight, an arc of raining sparks and fireflies behind it. It hit Nattic from behind and sizzled as the great carpet of wiry hair and flab burned.

  “Airim’s cock,” Nattic screamed. He dropped his torch and hatchet and swatted at his back with both hands.

  Sunell used the knife to cut her other arm free, then her feet. She went to Anaz, her small fingers working at the buckles on his right hand.

  “Fucking freaks,” Nattic roared. He scrambled to where he’d tossed his tunic and his shortsword, a table near the hearth. He drew the sword.

  His hand free, Sunell moved to Anaz’s feet while Anaz worked at his left hand. Every touch sent a dull metallic jolt up his arm.

  Nattic lunged for Sunell with the sword, three, maybe four steps away. Anaz picked a cobblestone out from the floor just as Nattic stepped on it and it skidded out from under him. He flopped hard onto his chest, his chin cracking on the ground.

  And then Anaz was free.

  He stood. Woozy, but standing. The hsing-li was everywhere, the colored energy moving like small streams through and around everything, up through his feet, into him. He bent and picked up one of the daggers. Sunell moved behind him.

  “I’ve been wrong,” Anaz said.

  Nattic stood up and held the sword out in front of him. He looked from his short sword to Anaz’s dagger, a third of the reach of his, but then he looked at Anaz in all his violent nakedness. The years of Anathest written into his flesh. This was different. Anaz could see Nattic knew that. The world had shifted. There was something balancing—every movement, every choice Nattic made mattered from here to forever.

  “I think I’ve been wrong maybe for as long as I’ve been alive,” Anaz said. “Maybe I always will be, but not tonight. Not about this. A very special woman in my life once told me that when we must take a life, we must take it, grieve for it, then let it go. All is as the hsing-li wills it. Even death. Somehow I’d forgotten that. I’d mistaken never struggling, never trying to hold on to anything as letting the hsing-li have its will, but I was wrong.”

  “I should have killed you,” Nattic said.

  “You probably should have,” Anaz said. “I am sorry to end your life, Sir Nattic. I will weep for you.”

  Nattic lunged at him. It was a competent move, a move with years of practice behind it, years of war, but it was slow, filled with fear and clinging and desperation. It was not of the hsing-li’s will.

  He moved under the knight’s blade, tapped it with the palm of his hand and with the other, opened the knight’s throat.

  Nattic stumbled forward two or three steps before he stopped. He stood in front of Sunell, Anaz behind him. He looked at the girl and his life and every life he’d ever touched, every dream, every word, every hope bubbled out of his throat in a red bib down his chest.

  Anaz closed his eyes, let the tears fall.

  66

  Isabell had forgotten her shoes. How could she forget her shoes? It was the jelly, the sludge inside of her; a slurry of terror and guilt and urgency pushing her forward without time to think.

  Time. There was none left. Lelana, Sunell, Anaz. That was the order. Isabell would free each of them, starting with her handmaiden only two stories below.

  She flew down the steps, her bare feet slapping against the damp stone. Outside, the rain hissed and lightning blitzed across the horizon. She held the dead knight’s sword. Thunder walloped against the tower and Isabell.

  The dead knight. The knight she had killed. A boy, really, barely older than Isabell. Stop. Grieve later. You have your whole life for guilt. And if not, you’ll find Airim’s justice soon enough.

  Someone far away screamed. Isabell stopped and listened and then there was another and another, soon dozens of voices, screaming. They came from outside. She dropped another several steps to the window and stuck her head out just enough to look left into the inner bailey. From all the way up here on the twelfth story and with the rain and the darkness, there was little she could see. Shapes. People running? Someone with a torch moved into the square and she thought she saw a dog or a bear or something run across the open field in front of the figure.

  Teeth. A giant open mouth lunged at Isabell’s face, more motion than substance and Isabell screamed and jumped backward. Her feet slipped on the damp stone and she fell back, the edge of a step smashing into her tailbone. Her eyes were still closed when she slashed with her sword and it connected with something. The something screeched.

  She opened her eyes just as a Fletcher finished pulling itself through the window. Its face was that of a dead wolf, mostly bone and flags of flesh and it smelled like rain and feces and summer. It smelled like hell writ material.

  Daveon’s knee screamed as he came out of the Sunflower Stop, but he didn’t care. It was as if the joint had been packed with stone and he tried to bend, to squeeze it and push himself forward, but it refused to give. So it was, one leg a stick, the other driving him forward. He reached the alley behind the Sunflower Stop.

  A dog was snapping at Nikolai, its head bobbing and weaving, playing. It was huge, as tall as the boy, with bird talons grafted as tiny spikes along its spine and its guts trailed behind it like bloody leashes the creature had broken.

  Nikolai slashed at it with his knife. “Up, Elnis!” he shouted. Behind him, Miria was on Red, trying with both hands to pull Elnis back into the saddle, but the boy was too heavy and he was crying and not helping at all. Red, bless him, stood strong, not moving, watching the creature.

  Somewhere Daveon heard a growling sound as he charged forward and soon realized he was making it. He came up behind the dog and snatched up the end of the grey intestine. It was slippery with rain and blood and the eternal Wretched mucus, but Daveon looped it over and over his forearm, walking forward.

  Nikolai at last saw him. “Pa!”

  Daveon planted his strong leg in front. “Get the fuck away from my son!”

  The creature lunged for Nikolai, but Daveon heaved back on the guts and they snapped taut. The creature yelped, a layered sound of several animal voices. Something tore inside the monster and a pulsing part of it fell out of its stomach and slapped into a puddle. The dog-thing crashed, spraying mud across Nikolai. It was slow to find its feet, but Daveon wasn’t slow to reach it. Just as the creature reached all fours, turning to face him, he was there, his sword whistling, slicing rain drops in half. The blade scythed into the creature’s skull. The impact rippled up his arm and he felt the edge blunt off of something before cutting all the way through. He jerked the sword out.

  The creature yowled, a high bawling sound and burst forth, its jaws wide. He felt the heat of its breath. Something inside of him, something hot, something Ella may have called his fire, said to go. Go now. He lurched forward, driving his left forearm down the creature’s mouth while his sword slipped under its jaw, through its throat, out between its shoulders.

  He couldn’t keep his feet when the creature crashed into him and they fell. Mud splashed up around them.

  The undead canine gave a final burbling sigh.

  He’d been right. The creature had gagged on his arm, unable to close its teeth. Carefully, he withdrew his arm from the creature’s gullet and rolled it of
f of him. He sat up.

  Nikolai, Miria, Elnis, they were all looking at him, frozen in their movement.

  He crawled forward and pulled Nikolai into a hug.

  “Thank, Airim,” he whispered.

  “You killed it.”

  Daveon stood and pushed Nikolai down the alley. “Get the piebald,” he said.

  Someone was screaming. It was far away, coming from the keep.

  “We have to hurry,” he said.

  Nikolai sprinted down the alley, then slowed to a walk, using his perfect, gentle stroll towards a spooked horse, and recovered the animal.

  Daveon lifted Elnis and set him on the piebald, then turned back to Miria and ruffled her hair. “Thank you,” he said. She smiled at him. He took Red’s reins and met Nikolai and soon they were all mounted and sprinting out of town, across the bridge, past the keep.

  The screams were definitely coming from the keep. There were more of them now. Hundreds maybe. Men and women, though the two blended into one voice of fear.

  “Where’s Ma?” Nikolai asked from atop Red.

  A white burn of lightning lit the road to the west of the keep. Three figures, two on a horse and one large humanoid with a massive blade across his back on the other, raced past the keep, across the bridge. One of the figures riding double, the one in front, was a woman. Daveon would recognize her silhouette anywhere. It was the shape of his life.

  “Mammy!” cried Elnis and he pointed at the riders.

  Daveon jerked the piebald hard, spinning it back towards town, and that’s when he saw it. All this time and he hadn’t looked to the south. He almost laughed.

  There, rumbling forward in all its mythology, in all its horror, came the bone wall.

  67

  “The Stop,” Malic shouted to Two Fingers.

  Their horses were panting and Alysha could tell it wasn’t only from the running. She’d seen panicked horses before. Their ears swiveled every which way and there was too much white in their eyes.