He had no doubt she had done much—much more than he would have bothered to do toward winning votes. The people would not have forgotten Lugo’s death or the false note left on his body. They could not be won back by showing himself, nor did he have the heart to try. Other things than the election for alcalde were on his mind—like surviving. “They will have to make do with you. That is the better bargain in any case.” He kissed her cheek. “They would much rather look at the cactus rose than the thorn.”
She bristled, but glowed. Her hand slipped into his, chilly as always, but firm. “You change the subject. What else do I need to know of Crueses?”
“Juan intends to accept the Northern terms if the enemy—when, I should say—when they make it here.”
She stopped. “That is insane.”
“He plans to use our people as the blood sacrifice.”
Now, ferocity overspread her features. The look he’d seen so often when their sons were young and Beatriz believed them shorted or ill-treated. It sent a painful twinge through him as he thought of Salvador, remembering his loss anew, like the first time. Always it was close to his thoughts and yet always seeming a surprise and shock each time he remembered his son’s death.
Julian spoke first, cutting short the painful memory. “The people of Crueses do not know the Northern terms. It has been withheld from them.”
Ferocity turned to cunning as her features smoothed into her calculating expression. “That can be rectified.” Her mantilla bobbed as she nodded.
“I supposed it a cause best left to you.”
“You are correct, husband. Leave it to me. I will change this ciudad-estado and have it done before you return.”
His love for her soared. No one understood like Beatriz. They were like a matched set of horses in every way—perfect complements of each other. And with one stroke, he’d given his wife something to occupy her and keep her from running after him or trying to hide among the soldiers. This gave her a reason to stay put, far from the danger. He’d have no more of her in the hands of the Northerners. That day had killed him. Aloud, he said, “Leave Juan intact. It is no time to be making such a change.”
“I wouldn’t think of it. To remove a sitting alcalde? It isn’t done! As you should know.” Like lightning, she changed the subject back to what was really on her mind. “One speech before you go. To drum up the support again. It wouldn’t take much to tilt the vote back to you.”
“I have more important things to do—like spend the short time I’m allowed with my wife. Let sleeping dogs lie, mi amor. It will be as it will be.”
She went still against his side as they resumed walking toward their people, obedient to drop the subject, but ready to bring it up again at his first sign of weakening. He’d not heard the last from her on this topic. “Speaking of dogs, I have good news,” she said. “When we merged with the second camp, I found Maria and my dogs! Pietro will be so happy to see his daddy again. I left him to amuse the children, but I’ll fetch him before you go.”
Julian rolled his eyes, making sure she couldn’t see. “Lovely. I can’t wait.” He would rather she grilled him about the vote again. A quick kiss, then he put on his public face, straightening his back, ready to meet the concejales and pelotón captains among those coming forward to greet them.
A small cheer rose from his people at his arrival, tired faces brightening. It rippled back down the column. He acknowledged it with a raised hand, then turned to the city leaders.
“Capitáns, we leave within the hour for Aveston to take on the Northerners with our brothers from Crueses. Please prepare yourselves. Concejales, I leave you in charge again.”
The captains fairly glowed at his short instructions. They stood taller, bold lights appearing in their eyes. “Hi-ya, Alcalde,” they answered.
In contrast, the concejales couldn’t look more shocked. Some sputtered, others were left completely speechless, mouths hanging open.
“You would leave us defenseless?” Antonio sputtered. He’d put aside his butcher’s apron but still wore the sturdy work clothes beneath, showing bloodstains from his profession on the sleeves. “We’ve only just arrived. Let us settle first, Julian.”
“There is no time if we are to surprise the Northerners,” Julian answered. “I leave the gate and wall guards of both cities for your defense. It should be all you need. This is our chance to strike a real blow against a significant portion of their troops. It may not be decisive, but we have rallied Crueses and Aveston. I had no time to reach Suseph. Perhaps this battle can draw the military of the rest of the ciudades-estado to the fight.” It could be their only chance to do so. “Win or lose, I would have us go down fighting.”
“The council must meet and vote,” Osmundo argued. “You cannot just make these decisions and take our troops—”
“But I can.” Julian turned his back. “Have you forgotten because I’ve listened to you and heeded your council that in war the pelotónes report directly to me? For three more days, my word is law.”
Beatriz squeezed his hand in approval, and Julian allowed a discrete smile. It felt good—to lead again—to pretend he had put doubts aside. To be himself with his old confidence. No, the time for doubts had passed—for the moment at least.
He hurried over more instructions. “Our people will need to be split in half. The weakest and most fragile to stay here; the strongest to walk the extra mile to Suseph. They can’t all fit in this city. Is the bishop here?”
“In our carriage,” Beatriz said, looking that way.
“The priests can help organize, but you concejales must be the brave face to inspire the people.” The councilors nodded along. They might not like his plans, or him personally, but they weren’t blind to wisdom when they heard it. “Are all the pelotónes gathered?”
“We still lack Captain Gonzalo’s unit,” an officer said. “They are a day behind us.”
“We leave without them. They can catch up as they may.” Julian turned to Crueses to lead them inside. The course for good or ill was set—for now—and only the saints could foresee the outcome.
Chapter 28
“Santiago, save us! San Martin, spare us!” The screams had seemed to go on forever, long past Ramiro’s rational belief that a person could exist in such agony. But it was an eternity after they stopped before the sense of foul taint had retreated, leaving fresh air to tease his skin. Gone was the sense of worthlessness, the hopeless despair. The evil.
A trick to make him let down his guard.
“Santiago, save us.” He held tight to his mantra until the trill of birdsong broke the silence. A sound so sweet and so pure, it shocked him into forgetting the prayer he’d repeated for an eternity. Only then did pain rush in to fill the void. Cuts and slashes covered his body. Without looking, he knew the wound across his leg would require stitching—an injury caused by . . . nothing tangible.
Saints.
He shivered and retched, bringing up nothing. A second heave called attention to the dryness in his mouth, his tongue practically cleaving to the roof of his mouth, as if he was on a training exercise and had gone a day without water.
“What . . . what was that?” His mouth reacted slowly like he’d forgotten how to speak other words. When he tried to move, he found his hand clamped around his medallion of San Martin in a grip so tight it hurt to twitch his fingers. The metal cut into his skin. Sweat gone cold and something stickier covered his body, chilling him. His eyelids fluttered, letting in piercing brightness. His whole body responded with agonizing slowness. Lessons from his training took over.
Take stock of the situation.
His eyes focused first on the distance. Trees. Sky. A sun just above the horizon. Somewhere deep his brain suggested sluggishly that not much time had passed. Other than that he found no threats. No enemies. Just pain.
His wounds throbbed—the ones inflicted by the Northern sword no different than the mysterious injuries that had appeared out of thin air. Blood covered every i
nch of him. Driven into his clothing, his skin, his hair. Some of it was his own, but most belonged to others. He smelled the metallic taste of it every time he breathed. The ground around him was puddled with it . . . and chunks of other . . . things he refused to identify. Things that had been the Northern soldiers.
Claire lay across his lap, her hair matted to her scalp with the blood that covered every inch of her as well. He blinked and fumbled for her, realizing her chest moved in even breaths before his hands responded to his commands. Gashes and lacerations marred her skin, injuries identical to his own: hand, leg—but the blood covering everything made it impossible to tell how deep they went.
He shook her. “Claire. Claire!”
No response.
Jorga lay against his legs in the same condition, with one addition: an arrow stood from her thigh. She, too, breathed, if more shallowly and broken. He could see no signs of Errol, but then he feared to look too closely at the devastation around him.
They needed water and lots of it. Medical supplies. A way to clean their wounds. And most of all came a burning desire to flee, to escape this spot and never come back—if he could stand. Given the rubbery weakness of the rest of him, getting his legs to take his weight seemed doubtful.
He gathered Claire to his chest and held her close, trying to take in the smell of her. But there was only the scent of blood, sickening and fetid. Death.
“Claire!” Her eyelids fluttered.
She mumbled so low he had to lean closer. “I . . . hurt.”
Something snapped inside him, allowing panic to flood in.
“Bromisto!” he screamed, hoping against hope the boy could hear and come to their aid. Most likely the boy was in no better shape than they, or had fled, like back when he’d first encountered the witches. “Bromisto!”
The boy could be dead. How far had that evil reached? Had it gotten to Bromisto, the horses?
Saints . . . “Sancha.”
Ramiro put two fingers in his mouth, heedless of the blood covering them, and whistled, loud and shrill.
“A demon” Errol had said. “Dal” had been the Northerners’ cries. They hadn’t sounded like ones pleading for mercy, but rather had pronounced the name in fear. The feel—the reek—of whatever had happened had been the same as when Claire had sung her song of Dal for the Northern army. Just such a sense of impending doom . . . of malign intent had appeared then, too.
It was not coincidence.
None of that mattered. Not when Claire could be dying.
He scooted Jorga off, then forced his legs to gather under him, ignoring the screaming pain as he lifted with his knees. His body tilted as he tried to stand holding Claire, corrected, and made it upright. He stood swaying, unsure where to go or what to do. That’s when he noticed it.
The blood spatters, lumps of flesh, and puddles made a perfect circle in the clearing. It missed the end of the barn, encompassed several trees, and had a clear edge around the ring, as if drawn by a giant finger in the sky. Goosebumps rose over his skin.
“The house,” a voice croaked.
Ramiro glanced down to see Jorga’s eyes open. The arrow had struck the middle of her thigh, missing the bigger vessels on the inside. “Take her to my house.”
“There were more soldiers there.” He was in no shape for a fight, couldn’t remember where he’d even dropped his sword. Instead, he looked toward the top of the valley and the hill where they’d left Bromisto and their supplies. His legs trembled even considering the idea of going uphill.
The bushes crackled, and he tried to brace himself, but only ended up staggering backward and nearly losing Claire. Branches pushed aside, and Sancha cantered to the edge of the blood-spattered clearing—Bromisto on her back. The boy gripped the reins of the second horse, drawing her along behind despite the mare’s obvious reluctance.
As the boy slid down, Ramiro tottered toward them, trying to lay Claire across Sancha in the boy’s place. He managed it just before his legs gave out. He groaned and held on to the mare, just breathing and taking in the smell of dusty horseflesh, clean and not coated with blood.
Sancha butted him so she could bring her soft nose to his face, sniffling and nosing at his head, saying quite clearly in the way of horses, “There you are. What nonsense do I have to rescue you from this time?” He put his arms around her neck and just held on.
Bromisto stood at his side, reaching out to touch Ramiro’s clothes, then jerking back his hand as if he thought better of it. The reins of Claire’s horse were still in his hand, and the animal pulled against them, trying to escape. Bromisto held firm, even as his eyes rounded in astonishment as he took in the carnage, his face pale. “What happened? What is this?” His voice rose as shock turned to panic.
Ramiro had no answer other than to release Sancha. “It’s over. Where can we take them? They need a healer.”
“The house,” Jorga croaked again.
Irritation bloomed at her stubbornness. “I told you—there are soldiers there. We’ve got to get away before they find us.” Again came the urge to flee—to escape before whatever struck them and shredded human flesh returned.
“Nobody’s there,” Bromisto said eagerly. “When the screaming started, they ran in your direction. I thought the screaming meant the sirenas took care of them. Did they do this?”
“No,” Ramiro said. “It was . . . something else.” He didn’t want to frighten the boy more, and he hadn’t a clear idea of what to tell Bromisto if he did speak out. “The extra soldiers must be dead then.” Maybe they should go to the house. There would be water there, supplies.
“Stay here,” he told the boy. He didn’t want Bromisto walking in the puddles of blood. He waded back in alone, and made it to Jorga, bending down a little too fast as his knees folded at the last instant. The wound across his thigh blazed, and for a minute, the world spun. When it righted, he got his arms around the old lady. “Hold on to my neck,” he instructed. “This is going to hurt both of us.”
“Errol,” she panted in his ear as he lifted. She felt like a feather compared to Claire, all skin and bones. He tried to avoid the arrow, but brushed it, and she screamed.
“One thing at a time,” he managed to gasp. Bromisto helped settle Jorga across the other horse. Despite his clumsiness with the arrow, she remained conscious, even sitting upright. The only concession she made to the agony she must be suffering was to clamp her hands around the arrow as if to hold it stationary.
“Errol.” For once, her words sounded more like an entreaty than a command.
“I’ll look.” He had no hope of success, but Jorga wouldn’t stop or calm until he did. Once more, he forged into the puddles of blood, skirting around chunks of flesh, trying not to see, yet unable to avoid it. A glint of metal caught his eye—a button. Metal was about the sole thing that remained identifiable. Even the leather armor had been shredded. The Northerners’ weapons lay where they had fallen. Ramiro touched none of it.
Unlike the last time this happened in the desert, the body parts were too small to tell apart. He couldn’t even pick out the black-and-yellow of their uniforms—not under all the blood.
As he approached the last spot he’d seen the boy, Jorga kept him under sharp surveillance. Ramiro feared to see something he did recognize as his face would surely give it away to Jorga. The boy wouldn’t know to petition the saints for their protection. It was only luck Ramiro remembered how Lupaa survived. There was no way Errol could be alive. Nothing moved here. Even carrion birds seemed too frightened to gather.
His toe caught on a protrusion, and he looked down to recognize his sword, lying atop the top of a boot with a square chunk of leg still inside.
He retched, gagging again with the horror. Even the Northerners hadn’t deserved that kind of death.
After a deep breath, he steeled himself to reach for the blade. It had done no good here against whatever attacked them, but he couldn’t leave it. His parents had gifted it to him before his first ride.
Errol scrubbed at blood encrusting his face. “Demon.”
The kid looked to be uninjured. Despite being in nearly the center of the circle, he had less blood covering him. Most of his front was clean, like the blood couldn’t penetrate to him in his hunched position. Ramiro gasped in relief, before lowering the sword and shaking his head. “Can’t you say anything else? How are you alive?”
“The Great Goddess shields children and the simpleminded,” Jorga said. “So why are we still alive?”
Ramiro’s gut tightened, unsure whether to be awed or frightened. “A miracle.”
Chapter 29
When Claire woke, it felt like she’d come home. A familiar low ceiling and loft structure rose over her head. The building had the same back wall built into a hillside, lacking windows. She wanted to snuggle down in contentment, but she blinked groggily and realized the furniture was darker and heavier. The kitchen, while in the same spot, was arranged differently. Not home, but something similar. They must be inside her grandmother’s house.
She sat slumped in a chair covered with a stiff tan fabric and plump stuffing. Unlike her mother’s rocking chair, it didn’t stir as she sat up. A white cloth bandage circled her hand. Another had been wrapped around her upper leg. The flesh under the wrapping throbbed dully in time with her slow heartbeat. A sharper throbbing came from the side of her head and a careful touch found a large lump. She must have struck it on something. Innumerable small cuts and slices marked her skin in other places. The bandages formed the only clean places on her body. The rest of her seemed to be covered in drying blood.
Blood!
Ugh. She wanted to claw it off her face, her body, with her fingernails, but they were already clogged with the sickening substance. It tightened her skin as it dried, clinging more firmly, like a layer of repulsive mud. As much as she wanted to plunge into a tub of water, somehow, she couldn’t drum up the effort to move. It took all her strength simply to lie there. The thought of cleaning off the blood exhausted her. Her head was a mass of fog, unable to think clearly. She felt sucked dry of decisiveness.
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