Blood of War

by Remi Michaud

  Another thunder of hooves, this one not as pervasive as the last few, metal clashing, more screams and the Dakariin broke and ran into the trees. Another triumphant shout.

  For a while, sergeants bawled for order, for formation. Medics hastened across the lines, tending to those that could be saved, bypassing those that could not. It was a battle. Losses were inevitable. And the losses that day were steep. Early estimates passed down the line put their casualties at a little over five hundred. There was cause for cheer: the Dakariin dead were piled high, maybe nine hundred, maybe a little more.

  Hergis sat next to Krendal, and Trip tore a strip from his cloak to bandage a gash on his arm. Herry joined them, and for a moment they were silent as they let their blood cool.

  They were not given long.

  The alarms pierced the day once again. With a groan Hergis rose to his feet, helped the others up and took his place in ranks.

  Once again, Dakariin poured from the trees, but this time instead of charging into the Sharong troops, they stopped about twenty paces away and waited silently, each one as stone-faced as the next. Craning his neck, Hergis tried to see what they thought they were doing. Each Dakariin carried a tube of some sort, about the length of his forearm. The ends that were pointed this way seemed to be hollow. Hergis drew down his brow in confusion.

  Hergis heard Captain Fax call for the advance.

  Flashes. Hundreds of them. Each one followed by a dull Thub, and a low hissing noise.

  Then chaos.

  Ruddy bright flames erupted in the lines, and hard roars split ears. The ground rocked and churned under his feet and it was all Hergis could do to stay standing as more and more explosions rocked the Sharong troops.

  “What the fuck is that?” Herry shrieked.

  The next instant there was a white heat beside Hergis and it seemed a giant hand slapped him across the torso. Knocked sprawling, Hergis blinked. When he looked up, the sky and the writhing mass of bodies above him seemed to be red and somehow there seemed to be no sound anymore, well almost no sound. It was like putting a seashell to each of his ears. He wiped a hand across his eyes and that helped. Now it was just his hand that was red. It was not until he tried to lift himself that he noticed the weight across his legs.

  Glancing down showed him something that he never could have imagined in his lifetime. He stifled the urge to vomit when his gaze found what was left of Herry. His friend had been torn apart and the ruined upper left half of his torso was what held Hergis down. One eye stared still seemingly surprised from the half of his head that was not a bloody mess. Frantically, spastically, Hergis kicked the gory remains from him and lurched to his feet.

  He turned left and right, wondering if he was underwater because everything seemed so slow, so unreal, watched as the Sharong garrison seemed to break apart at the seams and start a general rout even as more of those insane hellfire blasts blew through their ranks like angry demons. Gasping, fear turning his bowels to water, Hergis backed away a step and another.

  Why exactly had he thought it would be so great to be posted here again?

  For all the fire, for all the explosions, maimed bodies and blood, it seemed that the Sharong troops had entirely forgotten the Dakariin archers. Hergis was no exception. As he turned and broke into a run, he felt that giant's punch and black spots danced before his eyes. This time it was high in his back and he fell to his knees.

  He felt a tug in his chest and he looked down. There, sticking out of his chest was a bloody arrow point.

  Oh shit. Oh shit.

  It should hurt, shouldn't it? He had seen plenty of arrow injuries in his time and he had heard the howls. But there was no pain. Just an odd tingling heat that radiated outward. Perhaps the tonic the medic had given him was deadening the pain. There should be some. He was sure of it.

  Then he coughed and along with the wetness that spewed from his lips there was a sensation of tearing deep in his chest and the pain was finally there. It raged through him unchecked and he suddenly found that he had a great deal of difficulty drawing breath. He battled that for a while, struggled to draw in one breath then the next, but he knew. He had seen enough battle in his life. He knew. The arrow had punctured his lung which was filling with his blood. Soon, he would drown in his own fluids.

  Did someone mention that Lef took one in the ribs? He thought it might have been Herry, or Trip. Then he thought that this was no way to die. Poor bastard.

  As crow's feathers brushed the edge of his vision, he felt suddenly cold and suddenly so tired. Perhaps he should lie down for a bit, rest up. It might help him feel better. That was what he did. As from far, far away, he felt his cheek grow cool on the ground and somehow it felt good where the other cold he was starting to feel, that spread relentlessly from his core, was an uncomfortable thing.

  As the crow's feathers closed in and blotted out the world, he regretted for one last time his choice of transferring to Sharong.

  * * *

  In normal Dakariin fashion, the dead were left to rot where they fell, a veritable cornucopia for the scavengers who came to feast. Some few from the Sharong garrison escaped that terrible slaughter, but the Dakariin were ruthless and they spent the next few days in a frenzied hunting spree chasing down the fleeing, terrified men and women of the king's army.

  There were not many.

  When they were finished with their butchery, the Dakariin set camp and had a great festival to celebrate their victory over the sunlanders. There was much drunkenness as well as activities common to an invading horde when there are villages, and women, nearby.

  When they set out some few days later to meet the other half of their force to the south of Killhern, they left nothing behind except for ashes and somewhere north of eleven thousand bodies.

  Chapter 32

  One moment, he stood beside a blasted lilac tree in a barren and lifeless landscape, and the next he stood beside a pond in an idyllic lea that brimmed with birdsong and the chitter-skitter-twitter of wildlife at play and at war. One moment, he smelled dust, and decay, and the next, flowers and grasses, earth, life.

  The sun played hide and seek among the powder-puff clouds and his pond alternated between dull iron gray and sparkling quicksilver. Just seeing his pond brought a sharp pang to him, brought his past back into stark clarity. Days spent here fishing, swimming, playing games of Catch-Me-If-You-Can, or just sitting there by the shore watching the sunset and trading stories with his friends returned so clearly to his mind's eye that it might have just happened yesterday.

  But of course that was just a foolish fancy. It had been more than a year—and felt like an eternity—since he had last laid eyes on the place.

  He tore himself away from the well-remembered shore that was lined with thick tufts of reeds and weeds so much like a bad haircut, and he raked his surroundings with eyes that might have been made of steel. To the west, the bit of woods, the part that was cut off from the great ancient forest south of the farm, stood as it always had, oaks and elms interspersed with patches of conifers. Not a huge forest—barely more than a glorified copse—but still, for a boy, it had seemed limitless. To the east, he was just able to glimpse the edge of the fields that were a carpet of green where corn and barley grew. To the south the steep hill, that rose from the ground like a wave, that he used to roll down during the summer and slide down during the winter. Rising from the top was the tree where he had watched his friends play out countless adventures. It was all so familiar it made him choke, made him wonder how he would react when he saw other more cherished parts of his past. It made him wonder, fleetingly, if he wanted to see those parts at all.

  Gods, but he was tired. The events of the past weeks had taken their toll, and now seeing this, being here, being buffeted by memories that should have remained dormant, he felt his shoulders sag, his legs go weak. Perhaps a little rest would be in order. Perhaps a few moments to sit and gather himself. He found a stone a few feet from the shore large enough for him to sit o
n. He picked a reed, a cattail, and he sat, slowly shaving the velvet brown end with a fingernail and let his thoughts take over, let them take the bit in their teeth and go for broke.

  As he sat, lost in his thoughts, an image popped into his mind. He looked up with a start, and grunted. Right over there, just a few paces from where he sat, he recalled some boys from another farm, boys who had come here to get drunk, and who had at least in part been the reason that the course of his life had brought him here, to this moment.

  He did not blame them. He knew full well they had not made him what he was. He knew if not they, then someone else would have performed the same function. They were not guilty of murdering an army with one bad choice, or Daved's death, or anything else that had happened in the last decade. But they had set him on the track. It was the first time he could recall hearing that ringing in his head, the first time his own inner self, his dark side, as the poets might have said, had peeped through. He grunted again and it was with a bitter sort of amusement that he recalled Valik storming around the farm for the next few days with a nose the size of a gopher. No, those boys had not made his life what it was. They had been the road marker: JUREL'S LIFE – NEXT LEFT. Who knew the road, broken and winding, would have led through dense forests and forbidding deserts?

  He stayed and he pondered longer, as the sun began to dip, to sag as though the mugginess of the day caused it to wilt. He stayed, skipping stones, shaving more cattails, or just staring into the water that darkened from blue-white to ruddy golden to maroon and finally to black. He stayed, and when he grew tired, he rose and wandered to a nice soft spot on the ground where he lay down and watched the stars begin again their celestial theater until he fell asleep.

  * * *

  His pond was black. He did not know what caused this blackness but it was as black as an inkwell. This was strange to him; the sun was a great ruddy, burning ball that seemed twice its normal size. That too was strange. Not just because it was too big but because it glared down from the north. He stared at his pond, uncertain, confused, puzzling out why it should be so, why his pond did not reflect at least some of the demon sun.

  He knelt at the shore and reached a hand to the still water. Water? He did not know what else to call it; for lack of a better term, he stuck with it but it seemed as much like water as wolves seemed like sheepdogs. As his hand stretched closer, his bare wrist and torn cuff caught his eye. Abruptly, he glanced down with a jolt. His silken black shirt was not there. Instead, he once again wore his tattered rags, the ones he thought he had left back in his place. It was another question.

  For the moment, he decided to ignore it; there were bigger fish to fry as the saying went. Once again, he reached his hand toward the water and as he did so, a new emotion began to claw its way through the confusion. His breath shortened, turned raspy. Beads of sweat began to form on his forehead and he visibly paled. His senses sharpened as his eyes widened. Suddenly, he perceived movement within the water. It was not the regular movement of water in a pond; there were no ripples, no sound of water lapping against the shore. Instead it was something in the water, a darker shadow inside the dark.

  He snapped his hand back before he touched it. Terror made him tremble, made him scuttle back from the edge of the pond that he knew in that instant would kill him if he dared breach its surface.

  “No, child. I will not kill you.”

  The voice made him gasp, not only because it was unexpected, not because it shattered the stillness and banished the pieces of the peace, but because it was raspy, grating, oily and slithery. And most undeniably...evil.

  “Who are you?” asked Jurel as he searched the area, searched for the source of that terrible voice. Even though, somewhere inside him, he knew where it came from.

  “Ah ah. It is too early to reveal that.” The voice was tinged with a morbid amusement that made Jurel's skin crawl. “Rest assured that I want you very much alive. I would like you to come and visit me.”

  “Who are you?” he asked again.

  “That will become tiresome very quickly,” the voice responded, oddly sibilant. There was a hint of rebuke under the amusement. “Rest assured that I wish to be your friend. I wish to get close to you.” A chuckle, low and loaded with meaning. “Yes, much closer.”

  Jurel's throat closed. He tried to back away but his feet would not obey him. He tried to squeeze shut his eyes, but something held them open. Helplessly, he stared at the pond, at the swirling within.

  “What do you want?”

  “Tsk. I told you. You do not listen well, do you child?”

  The pond began to simmer, to bubble as though someone had set a flame under it. It roiled and boiled, and black steam began to rise into the air. But it did not go far. Instead of dissipating away into the atmosphere, it stopped perhaps a dozen feet above the surface. Jurel watched in horror as it began to gather, to coalesce into a midnight cloud. More steam rose to join the cloud, and though vague, hazy yet, it began to take shape.

  What might have been arms spread from the sides below a ball of gas that would likely become the head. Two pinpoints of light began to glow in that ball, pinpoints the color of the medal of fire that hung bloated in the sky. The thing began to take shape, to resolve itself into its final form: arms, a torso, a head. Its legs were not formed and perhaps they would not for the thing seemed to be standing in a pillar of smoke. The eyes brightened, glowed a dirty yellow-white and the bottom of the head separated. It was smiling.

  “Begone! Go on now. Tis not the time for this!”

  Jurel spun to face this new voice, this voice that he recognized though he could not recall from where, but there was no one there. His eyes skipped and darted as he searched. The voice was that of a woman. An old one. An angry one.

  “You!” hissed the shadow thing above the pond.

  “O' course me. Go on. Go back to your prison.” Under the raging shriek was a layer of pain like bedrock under topsoil.

  “Bother this young one no more. He will arrive in due time.”

  The creature above the pond shrieked and Jurel clamped his hands over his ears for it was as though a thousand fingernails were dragged down a thousand slates. As yet, he did not have control of his eyes and he watched as the creature wavered, vibrated like a struck bell. His breath came in short gasps, his lips were pulled back in a rictus grin as he watched the creature's arms spread as though the creature was stretching for him, reaching, grasping, murky, half-formed fingers flexing like claws.

  It blew apart into a cloud and that cloud settled to the surface heavily, like grease.

  And suddenly that which gripped him, that which held him to the spot disappeared. He slumped, his knees buckled and he fell heavily to a sitting position.

  “Ne'er fear young 'un,” the old lady said. “He won't be botherin ye fer a bit. Ye just keep your eyes open an yer heart guarded, y'hear?”

  Somehow he knew the old lady and the creature were gone. Call it an emptiness, call it a void, like walking into a dark room and instinctively knowing whether or not someone is there. He searched anyway, but there was nothing. The terror receded like an outgoing tide, his breathing slowed to something closer to normal though there was still a raspy edge, his trembling stopped, and the sweat turned to pinpricks of ice on his brow.

  His eyes found once again the sun and he was relieved, for though it was still in the north, still too large and too bloated, it had contracted to something closer to what he considered normal. He lowered his sight, hoping and dreading. Molten shards reflected from the rippling blue pond.

  * * *

  He opened his eyes. Herring bone clouds the color of night stretched across the sky like pathways in the roseate sky. In the east, the red-gold sun bubbled over the lip of the horizon. For a moment, he froze. For a moment he did not know where he was, and when he did, when it came to him in a flash, he rose in alarm.

  His eyes found the pond, and terror gripped him. It was black. As black as ink. He backed away a step. He s
aw a ripple. Another. He saw a sparkle of light and he breathed a sigh of relief. When he eyed the pond more carefully, he saw that in fact it was not black. Dark yes, but not quite black. It was the normal color of water that has yet to be touched by the day. Ruddy lines played along the crests of the ripples like tiger stripes as it lapped gently at its shore. He glanced at his arms and his chest, and he was intensely relieved to see black silk and golden swirls.

  Chuckling ruefully as the remainder of his woolly sleepiness dissipated, he turned and surveyed his surroundings, found everything was as it should be. Birds tweeted drowsily, a bumblebee droned past, water slurped softly, and the reeds whispered quietly as a soft breeze wandered.

  Satisfied, he turned west and strolled toward the woods. His plan was a simple one. He thought it best if he avoided contact with the farm's denizens—though he was sorely tempted to seek out a certain few of them—but he wanted to see his cabin, Daved's cabin. Once he was satisfied, he would disappear before anyone knew he had been there. A nice simple plan wrapped up in a tidy package.

  Into the forest he went, into the still deep shadows, and he passed as silently as a wraith, not disturbing twig or leaf. He found the edge of the irrigation trench and his memories flooded back, memories of himself, burned to a crisp, carrying a pole and buckets slung over his shoulder because the land was caught in a terrible drought and the crops were withering. Memories of seeing a fat man whom he had considered an uncle smiling jovially at him and trading laughing words with him. Memories of a petulant bully who threw shovelfuls of dirt at him. He looked along the trench, back through time and he sighed wistfully. There was a bitter edge to the memories, but for the most part they brought a kind of solace to him, a sanctuary from the present.

  In the here and now, he was dismayed to see that the trench they had worked so hard to open up was lined with a year's worth of dirt and detritus. Obviously, no one had tended to them. Obviously someone had forgotten the toll that drought had taken.