Umbertouched

by Livia Blackburne

“Mehtap, wait!”

  She ignores me. “Father!” she calls. I hear rapid footsteps, and then another piercing call. “Father!”

  It’s her panic that finally forces me to gather my wits. “Mehtap, stop!” I run out after her. Sisson stands at the cave mouth, staring after her.

  “Where’d she go?” I shout at him. “She’ll bring everyone within a league of this place down on us.”

  “Father!” Mehtap calls again, and I run toward her voice, dimly aware of Sisson behind me.

  Finally, I catch up to her. She stands, panting, looking out into the dense woods. I grab her by the arm. “Quiet!”

  She wrenches her arm out of my grasp. “If any harm has come to him...”

  “We don’t know if it has,” I say. “Maybe Walgash took him somewhere safer.” But the blood, and the mess.

  Four Amparan soldiers step out of the trees. One aims a bow at us. A cold sweat breaks out over my skin.

  “We are rosemarked,” I say. “Keep your distance.”

  The soldier closest to us curses. “Both the women are rosemarked. Not just the healer.”

  The healer? But I’m not wearing a sash.

  Mehtap raises her hands. “I’m Mehtap, General Arxa’s daughter. Is my father with you?”

  The first soldier gives a bark of a laugh. “Your pedigree won’t help you with us.”

  And then I realize that these soldiers aren’t wearing standard Amparan livery. They’re dressed in nondescript but fine armor, just like the men who’d killed Sarsine. Kiran’s men. Had they seen us at the beach? Did they track us from the camp?

  “Imbeciles,” says Mehtap. She speaks imperiously, though I can sense the fear behind it. “If you lay one finger on me and my father finds out, you and your family will hang.”

  The soldier’s face hardens. “Shoot her,” he commands the archer next to him. The archer hesitates.

  “That’s a command,” the leader says.

  The archer draws his bow. Mehtap flinches.

  “No!” I yell.

  A twang of a bowstring. A blur of motion, and Mehtap screams. I look at her, steeling myself for what I might see, but she remains standing, and she keeps screaming.

  In front of her lies Sisson, eyes dull. Blood streams out of the arrow wound in his chest.

  Mehtap crouches next to him, collapsing into ragged sobs. “Not you. It’s not supposed to be you.”

  She looks up at the lead soldier, bares her teeth, and runs at him. It’s a strange sight. Small, unarmed Mehtap charging at a fully armored soldier. Perhaps that’s why the archer is late to draw another arrow. Perhaps that is why Mehtap is already halfway to him before he shoots her in the stomach.

  And now I’m the one to scream.

  Mehtap stumbles, but she keeps running. The soldiers back away but not quickly enough. She flings her hand out toward them as she collapses. Several soldiers, including the leader, stare aghast at her blood splattered on their tunics. They draw their weapons, and I reach for my blowgun, though I know I’d only be delaying my death.

  A familiar voice booms out from the trees. “Disengage!” It’s a voice that’s used to giving orders and used to being obeyed.

  Miraculously, everybody stops. The man who’d shot Mehtap backs away. I loosen my grip on my blowgun as the soldiers around me lower their swords.

  Arxa stands at the very edge of the battle, leaning heavily on a stalk of bamboo. He clutches his side with his hand, and his face is drawn in pain.

  Nobody makes a sound.

  Wounded and weak as he is, Arxa still carries an air of authority. His eyes travel from one man to the next, and then fall on Mehtap, lying on the ground in a pool of blood. He stares, his face twisting in disbelief as he staggers, then falls to her side.

  “Mehtap. Why are you here?”

  “Step away, General,” says the lead soldier. “We have orders to execute her.”

  “Orders from who?” I’ve never heard Arxa sound so dangerous.

  “The emperor,” he says. “For treason.”

  “Leave her be,” says Arxa, standing up. “I’ll take this up with the emperor.”

  “We have our orders,” the soldier says again.

  “Leave her be,” Arxa says again, his voice rising.

  I can’t breathe, and I can’t look away.

  The soldier sets his jaw and draws himself taller. “Step aside, General, or we will go through you.”

  “Go through me, then!” Arxa’s challenge rings in the air.

  The soldier hesitates, gathering his resolve. He raises his sword.

  Arxa doesn’t move, just stares him down. I feel another scream building up.

  Then suddenly an arrow protrudes out of that soldier’s chest. Two more fly through the air and skewer his companions. There’s a flash of metal, and then the last man falls, felled by Arxa’s sword.

  Walgash comes out of the trees. My knees give way.

  Arxa kneels again by Mehtap’s side. “It’s all right, my gem,” he says, and his voice shakes. “Just stay still.”

  I look on in horror, wishing I had bandages even as my healer’s instincts take stock. The arrow is embedded deep in Mehtap’s abdomen. The blood spurts out too quickly. There is no way to stem this flow.

  I see now that Arxa is doing the same thing, assessing his daughter’s injuries with the expertise of one who’s lived his life on the battlefield. “No,” he whispers. It’s the first time I’ve seen him even come close to losing control. He cradles her head in his hands, his gaze jumping from her face to her bleeding midsection and back again.

  “Why are you here?” he repeats over and over.

  Mehtap stirs in Arxa’s arms. She directs a glassy gaze at him, and for a moment, she smiles. “Father.”

  Slowly, in fits and spurts, she inches her hand toward her purse. Her fingers are clumsy, and she drops it.

  Arxa picks it up for her.

  “Open,” she whispers.

  Arxa reaches in and takes out a rolled parchment. He grips it so hard that I fear he might crush it to dust.

  “Don’t fight a traitor’s war,” Mehtap says. “You deserve better.”

  Arxa unrolls the parchment and looks at it, uncomprehending. “What is it?”

  “It will explain...” Mehtap says. Then her face takes on an expression of intense determination. “Father, I need to tell you. I’ve done something horrible....” She gasps in pain.

  “Don’t speak, Mehtap,” he says. “Don’t speak. I love you.”

  She screws up her face. I can tell she’s going to try again, but then pain lances across her features once more.

  She lays her head on her father’s arm and falls silent.

  The forest groans around our camp, a bedlam of cracking twigs, shuddering leaves, and thousands upon thousands of footsteps. Soldiers come out of the foliage along the entire width of the valley, advancing toward our walls until they stop just outside of arrow range. And there, they stay.

  Over the next hours, more Dara flee back down the cliff trail. Some have been wounded by soldiers. Others bear injuries from falls as they fled. The lucky ones made it back unharmed but frightened. Gatha asks endless questions of those who return, trying to figure out if the tainted flour had been used against them. It’s hard to know. No one had seen much in the confusion, but on Kaylah’s advice, Tal confines all the returnees in quarantine.

  I speak to the returners as well, gleaning every detail I can on the battalion coming up the trail. It’s hard to untangle the conflicting stories, but it seems like a standard battalion of a hundred is headed our way, and they climb the trails with pack mules carrying wooden beams and bundles of what look like food. Their progress up the mountainside is slow, but they’re probably less than a day away.

  If they reach the top of the ridge, they could catapult the rose plague bundles over the edge. The tainted flour would rain down over the entire camp.

  “You must stop them,” says Gatha. “If they fire the catapults, then it does
n’t matter whether we can hold off the army at our gates.” We’re standing together on the camp’s fortifications. Below us, the main Amparan army waits in the valley, as numerous as the trees. They’re all armed, with weapons at the ready, but they don’t move. They’re trying to frighten us, make us wonder when it will finally happen. I hate to admit it, but it’s not altogether ineffective.

  “Why would Kiran send his entire army after us if he had the rose plague planned all along?” I ask. “Why put his troops in harm’s way if the plague will do his conquering for him?”

  “Maybe he’s not sure the rose plague would work,” says Gatha. “Maybe he wants to keep us from fleeing. Maybe he doesn’t want to use the plague weapons if he doesn’t have to. Maybe he’s fickle.”

  If the army breaches our walls, we die. If the battalion on the cliffs gets too close, we die. Zenagua must yearn for our company.

  “When do you think they’ll storm the walls?” I ask.

  “I think they’ll wait for dawn, but we must be ready for anything.” She hands me a tablet. “Gaumit and Karu will go with you to the ridge. Seventeen other fighters without umbermarks have also volunteered to fight under you. I told them to meet you at the bottom of the ridge path in a half hour.”

  I look at the names on the tablet. Twenty against a hundred is far better odds than the rest of our fighters will have.

  “You may have to order our unmarked fighters close to the plague weapons,” says Gatha. “Be prepared for that.”

  That’s a sobering thought. I wonder why it’s so much easier to order someone into a fight than it is to order someone into a fight with rose plague.

  A blast of horns sounds just then from below. There’s a mighty shout, and the Amparan army surges forward. For a moment, I stare uncomprehending.

  “They’re attacking. Take your stations!” Gatha shouts. “Go, Dineas. This is not your place.”

  As I run down the back of the berm, Gatha shouts, “Arrows!” The twang of a hundred bowstrings sounds behind me.

  If I thought the camp was in chaos before, this is a hundred times worse. Shidadi zigzag through the bamboo to their stations. Dara run to help as well—some toward the wall with spears, others gathering with shovels, buckets, and tools of every kind to fortify the walls.

  “Arrows incoming!” someone shouts just as I catch a glimpse of flame through the leaves above me. I crouch at the base of a thick stalk of bamboo, throwing Gatha’s tablet over my head and wishing for a shield as a rain of arrows comes down, some with fireballs at their tips. Screams echo as some find their mark. A few steps from me, a fighter from Karu’s tribe falls with an arrow through his collarbone. Next to him, another arrow smolders in the underbrush. A small, familiar shape runs past me with a bucket of dirt.

  “Alia!”

  She stops in her tracks, her bucket swinging in a wild arc. She looks as if the slightest touch will knock her over, but she sees me, and her chin lifts.

  “You shouldn’t be at the front lines,” I shout.

  “These are my people. This is my life.” She runs to the smoldering arrow, dumps dirt on it, and stomps it out.

  Do I stop her? Carry her bodily back to her parents? Zivah would want me to, but I’ve seen the fire in Alia’s eyes.

  “Alia, wait!”

  I take a step toward her. She shifts her weight from foot to foot, ready to flee, but I go past her to the fallen Shidadi from Karu’s tribe. His lifeless eyes stare toward the fortifications. I take his shield and hand it to Alia.

  “Take this.”

  I can see her struggling to quell her disgust at taking a dead man’s shield.

  “Take it,” I say, louder now. “Keep it over your head.”

  She sets her jaw and accepts the shield. I grip her shoulders. “If they breach the wall, take a sword from one of the fallen and fight your way out of here, you understand? Just as I taught you.”

  She nods.

  “Neju guide your steps.”

  As she runs off, I hope to the gods I haven’t sent her to her death. But there’s no time to wallow in doubt. I’m still out here unprotected, and I have a job to do. Problem is, I don’t know where any of my soldiers are.

  Someone shouts my name as I run toward the ridge trail. It’s Gaumit, his umbermarks stark in the light of the flames.

  “We need to go,” I shout. “Where’s Karu?”

  We find her waiting at the bottom of the trail, her weight on the balls of her feet, her one eye fierce. With her are Hashama and ten of the fighters that Gatha had assigned to me. I don’t know where the others are, or whether they will come. “We don’t have time. We have to go.” I leave the tablet of names at the bottom of the ridge and scratch a message in the dirt for anyone else who comes later to catch up.

  “Hashama,” I say. “You’re the fastest runner. Can you go on ahead and scout? Take Slicewing with you.”

  “For Sarsine,” he says, as serious as always. For once, my expression is just as grim as his.

  He charges up the side of the mountain while we follow at a slower pace. As we climb, we get a better view of the Amparans storming the walls. Arrows fly in both directions as Amparan soldiers run up the berm. When they’re slowed by the bamboo stakes up top, Shidadi drive them back with long spears.

  “Keep climbing,” says Karu. “You can’t help them by watching.”

  Easier said than done. We hike in the darkness with the death cries of our kin growing ever fainter below us. By sunrise, we’re on top of the ridge. War still rages in the camp below, though we can no longer tell which soldiers belong to which army. The other side of the ridge overlooks the open ocean. A familiar ship floats in the distance. Apparently the emperor has decided to come closer to the fighting.

  “Do you have a plan?” asks Karu. The salt-laden wind whips at her tunic.

  “I’m working on it,” I mutter.

  Slicewing flies toward me, circling once over my head before landing on my shoulder. Two hours away, says the note she carries. I thank her and send her back.

  I look at the narrow twisty trail on this ridge, and the boulders on either side. “We need dried bamboo. Lots of it, and twenty torches.” There aren’t many plants this high up, so I send soldiers back down the trail to gather some. “You have an hour,” I tell them.

  Meanwhile I start the others gathering the dry grass growing between rocks to use as kindling. I breathe a sigh of relief when an hour passes and the men I sent down the mountain return with armfuls of dried bamboo.

  “Good,” I say. “Separate them into batches and plant them along the path. Better if they’re out of view.”

  Slicewing returns. A quarter hour away.

  Everything depends on timing this right. “Give me fire,” I say.

  Behind me, someone strikes a flint and nurtures a small flame to life. We pass him torches to light, one by one. I take a lit torch, as do seven others.

  “This better work,” mutters Gaumit.

  “It has to,” I say. “The Amparans can’t be this disciplined.”

  We take cover to wait. A crow caws in the distance. They’re here.

  “Light the bamboo!” I command. The eight of us with torches bend low and run each to a bamboo bundle. The dried stalks smoke as I hold my torch to them, making my eyes water, and then a small orange flame catches. I wait until I’m sure it’ll burn, and then I run back a safe distance.

  I’m hearing footsteps now, both human footsteps and the clip clop of horseshoes on rock. The first Amparans come around the bend and slow at the smoke. The procession stops and a few soldiers come forward to investigate.

  The bamboo starts to pop. A few mules shuffle nervously.

  “Arrows!”

  We let loose a barrage of arrows as the fires we started gain strength. Pops and explosions fill the air. One mule turns and races back down the trail. Soldiers dive out of the way, while several of their slower comrades get trampled or tossed off the cliff. As chaos spreads, more mules bolt, losing their ca
rgo and scattering the soldiers around them.

  “Forward!” I yell. With a mighty shout, we charge, the three umbertouched fighters leading the way. As we get closer, the untouched fighters slow, though they still back us up with shouts and arrows.

  Five Amparan soldiers take formation against me, Karu, and Gaumit. We don’t slow, just raise our blades to meet them. I run a soldier through, and he falls to the ground. As I face the next soldier, I’m aware of Karu and Gaumit desperately battling next to me. More soldiers come. More fall. The wind shifts constantly, blowing smoke into my face, and then away. My throat burns. My eyes water with the effort of staying open. And then the wind switches again, and I realize there are no more enemy soldiers within striking distance.

  I glimpse a large sack that’s fallen off a mule. With a quick glance around, I grab it and untie the rope tying it shut. Small flour bundles spill out. I grab an armload and throw them into a fire. Small fireballs ignite with each one, and I back away with each toss. Then I open a second bag and throw them in too. Karu and Gaumit join me.

  The volley of arrows behind me continues to fly. Several Amparan archers return fire, but we have the advantage of high ground and range. Twice, we’re charged by swordsmen, but our archers thin out their ranks, and Karu makes quick work of the three who make it through. Farther down the trail, someone calls a retreat. The remaining Amparans flee down the ridge, and then suddenly it’s quiet.

  “Quick,” I say. “Everything must be destroyed.”

  There are more bags strewn along the path, along with disassembled catapult parts. Most of the bags contain pouches of flour. Others have earthen jars, also filled with tainted flour. I wonder if these are supposed to fly farther than their softer counterparts. They go in the fire too. Handful by handful, we destroy it all. My face and my fingers grow hot from the flames. Finally, Gaumit brings the last batch. He starts to heave them into the fire, but I stop him.

  “Wait. Don’t throw them away.” And I gaze out to sea.

  The cliff face is almost completely vertical. There’s a reason the battalion took a three-day march up the mountain range instead of sailing here by sea. It’d be impossible to get that many men and all those machines to the top of the ridge from the beach below. But what about getting three Shidadi with jars of rose plague flour down the cliff face from the top of the ridge? Impossible, or just very ill-advised?