“He was yielding,” shouted Antioc as he pointed at the corpse.
“I didn’t know that,” replied Ferun with a shrug. Stree and Boran stepped out of the darkness behind him, flanking him. The former had a bloody dagger, the latter a pair of hatchets he’d no doubt looted from dead Scumdogs. “How could I have known?”
“He’d dropped his weapons and declared that he’d yielded,” shouted Antioc, stepping forward. Stree and Boran stepped between them. I looked behind me. Gargath was attending Uller’s wound. Reiwyn jumped down from the crest, putting her bow away and stepping between them.
“Everyone calm down,” she said, looking first at Ferun, then at Antioc. “I didn’t hear him yield, either—”
“You’re calling me a liar?” he asked, looking at her.
“No, no.” She shook her head and placed her hand on his bloodied chest. “I’m just saying, if I couldn’t hear him, neither could Ferun.”
That seemed to calm him, albeit only a little. “But you saw him drop his arms, yes?”
Reiwyn looked from Antioc to Ferun, then back at Antioc. Slowly, she nodded.
“Why do you even care?” asked Ferun, unstringing and shouldering his longbow. “He was a slaver. He took three of ours, including a child. You think he’d have let you live, had you yielded to him?”
“It doesn’t matter what he would have done,” he answered through clenched teeth. “He was a raider. I’m a soldier.”
“And soldiers kill,” Stree responded. “You’ve killed more men ‘an I kin count, I’ll wager . . .”
“Honorably,” growled Antioc. “A soldier has a code of honor and there is no honor in killing a yielding man.”
“Well, then your honor is preserved,” replied Ferun. “I killed him for you.” He laughed. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not bound by your ridiculous ‘code’ because I’m not a soldier.”
“What are you, then?”
Ferun smiled and looked at him with his one good eye. “I’m a survivor.”
“We were supposed to take one back alive,” I said, hoping to break the tension while providing some measure of support for my friend. “I’m sure Antioc was only following orders; that’s what a soldier does.” I stepped next to him and put my hand on his shoulder. It was sticky with sweat and blood. He barely acknowledged me. “Did you take any prisoners?”
“Didn’t get the chance,” Ferun replied. “They fought to the death, nicked me . . .” He pointed to a cut on his arm. “Killed Jortin.”
“I guess they were afraid of what we’d do to them if we took them prisoner,” said Boran.
Ferun chuckled icily. “Maybe they were smarter than they looked.” He glanced past me at Uller and Gargath. “After your vulture man is done stitching us up, he should check on the women.”
Gargath finished dressing Uller’s wound and moved to Antioc. He shook him off. His wounds were bloody, but superficial. Ferun did the same. Gargath ran to one of the women and began unbinding their ropes. Blackfoot and Front-Strider emerged and aided him.
Antioc and Ferun stared each other down, with Reiwyn trapped as though balancing on a rope held taunt between them. I had to say it was somewhat satisfying to see her torn between her best friend and her lover, though only for a second or two. After that, I felt immediately concerned for her feelings, and the well being of Antioc. He was tough, yes. But I wasn’t sure he was tough enough to take Ferun alone, much less with two of his lackeys. With Uller hurt and Reiwyn torn, and who knows where Front-Strider’s allegiance would fall, this was a fight we couldn’t win. Best to defuse the situation before it got out of hand.
I walked to Antioc’s side and, facing him, put my hand on his shoulder. It felt like he had a boulder under there. “It’s fair, friend. It’s fair.” He looked at me, took a deep breath, and his muscles slackened like a cat going to sleep. He nodded and turned away. Ferun, satisfied there wouldn’t be a fight, set about examining the corpses.
Antioc walked to Uller’s side and offered him a hand. “You fought well,” he said, gently pulling Uller to his feet. “You all did.” He looked at me. Reiwyn and Blackfoot had joined us by the sandbank.
“Not as well as I would have liked,” replied Uller, holding a red stained cloth to his shoulder. Gargath had done much to slow the bleeding, but he’d need deeper care if he wanted to avoid the wound going sour. “Is this what it feels like to get hit? How do you stand it?”
Antioc’s grim demeanor softened. “There’s a lot more of me to cut through, friend.”
Uller smiled. “Indeed.”
“Your spells,” said Reiwyn, “they proved most effective.”
“I’ll say,” I added. “Especially that bit where you made me faster. Any way to make that one last longer?”
Uller shrugged, then grimaced in pain when his wound pulled. “I’ve never had much of an interest in being a war mage, but we all learn a little bit of combat magic at the University. It’s not my specialty, though.” He crinkled up his lips. “At least, it wasn’t. I suppose it is now, by necessity.”
“You want your dagger back?” Blackfoot asked Ferun. He was searching the corpse of the one I’d killed when he looked up at us.
“Keep it,” he said, yanking the sword I’d impaled the Scumdog with from his corpse. “You’ll be needing it, and you do quite well with it. And you . . .” He wiped blood from the blade with the body’s shirt, sheathed it, and tossed the whole thing to me. “You keep that.”
“What? Why?” I shook my head. “I don’t need a sword.”
“Yes, you do.” He stood and brushed sand off his jeans. “You killed him, you keep it. You can have anything else on him, if you want it. He’s got some nice earrings . . .”
“I don’t want his earrings.”
“I’ll take ‘em!” Stree lunged forward and started yanking them out of the dead man’s ears.
“And I don’t want his sword.”
Ferun stepped up to me and clapped my shoulder; a little harder than I would have preferred. “But you do need one, whether you want it or not. Besides, it’s not much of a sword. More of a long knife.” With that, he stepped away, leaving me to examine my spoils. “Loot the bodies quickly. We leave in five minutes.”
“We’re not going to send them to the ashes?” asked Gargath, stepping out of the darkness with the girl child Ezfette in his arms. She was smiling, and played with one of the black vulture feathers on his robe.
“Why would we?” asked Stree. “They’re Scumdogs.” He spat on one of the corpses, which got a dirty look from the vulture man.
“We can’t just leave bodies here to rot,” said Front-Strider, holding a crossbow he’d looted from one of the corpses. “It’s an affront to the Daevas.”
“They won’t rot,” answered Ferun. He nodded to the jungle. “The gluttons will pick up the stench before long.”
That clearly didn’t sit well with Gargath. He bit his tongue, though, like we all had. Apparently, of all the things the Volteri did with corpses, letting them be eaten by giants was over the line.
“What about Jortin?” I asked. Ferun looked at me. “Surely we’ll not leave him for the gluttons?”
Ferun opened his mouth with a look that said that was exactly what he intended to do. Gargath interrupted him “You can’t be serious! We’re not going to leave one of our own dead on the beach . . . ?”
“Lower your voice,” he hissed. “Every glutton on his island heard the screaming from that battle! We’ll be lucky to make it back to the colony without ambush, and you’re going to let them all know we’re still standing out here like a buffet.”
“He’s right,” said Front-Strider. “Jortin was one of us. We must attend to him.”
“Agreed,” said Antioc. His grip tightened on his club as he stared at Ferun. Ferun stared back. “We’re taking him.”
I sighed. It was back on. Again.
“Fine.” Ferun pointed at Antioc. “You get to carry him, big boy.” He turned to Gargath and the othe
rs. “Time’s up. Let’s move.”
12.
That night, I slept with my new sword. Or, I tried to. Mostly I just lay there, in my itchy straw bunk, staring at the honed piece of metal sheathed in cracked leather in my hands. I’d polished every drop of blood off of it, even dipped it in the lagoon to get the dried bits off. I could still see it, though. It was red. No matter how clean I got it, the sword would always be red.
“What are you going to name it?” Antioc asked on the way back.
I gave him a furrowed brow. “Name it? Why the Daevas would I name it? It’s a sword.”
“It’s more than that. You won that in battle. You killed a man with it and saved your life, and the lives of your fellow warriors. That’s a lucky blade. It wouldn’t do to not give it a name.”
I crooked my eyebrow. “Did you name your club?”
“Of course.” He didn’t seem the slightest bit encumbered carrying Jortin’s corpse on his back. “Skullcrusher!”
“That’s extremely creative,” I said with a nod. “I’m sure no one has ever named a club that ever, in the history of clubbery.”
“It’s not a club,” he explained. “It’s a maul.”
“Very well.”
We didn’t speak much the rest of the way. The only one who really seemed to be in a good mood was Blackfoot, who danced around Reiwyn like a little grasshopper. It was nice to see someone was in high spirits after our victory. By all accounts, I should have been happy, too. We’d won. We’d rescued three colonists, including a child, from a brutal fate. We’d incurred minimal casualties, and obtained several swords, two crossbows, and a dozen daggers and hatchets: all of which would be invaluable resources for the community. Soon, we’d step through the gates just as the morning sun crested the sky and be greeted as heroes.
And yet . . .
The triumphant entry came and went. A tearful reunion ensued as our liberated prisoners ran to their friends and family, embracing and kissing and all that nonsense. Of course, we were met with applause, cheers, and even a few songs. Hot cups of un-uo were handed to the returning champions. A prayer was said over Jortin’s body before he was placed on a pile of kindling and sent to the ashes in a spiraling pyre. Gargath took Uller to the healer’s tent to tend closer to his wounds. Antioc and the others who’d been wounded joined them, leaving me alone with Reiwyn and Blackfoot. Not quite where I wanted to be, considering neither of them had spoken to me much in the last few days.
“I changed my mind,” I said at length, not able to look at her.
“About?” she asked.
Then I looked at her. “The wall.”
Her eyes widened. So blue, just like the sea . . . stop that!
“They need a double layer wall,” I explained, pointing at it from a distance. It needs to be wide enough for guards to walk across. These little guard stands they have aren’t going to do them any good. They are flimsy and create too many blind spots in the wall for these Scumdogs to get through. They need to be able to do rounds on the wall, along the top.”
“Can you do that?” she asked.
I grinned and pretended I didn’t hear the question. “With the hatchets we got tonight, we should be able to cut down enough trees to generate the lumber required. Antioc can pick a group of his burliest, fittest soldiers to do the chopping and carrying and hammering. I’ll need a drafting table, some pencils and paper. Lots of paper.” I looked at Blackfoot. “Can you get me lots of paper?”
He gave me a haphazard salute, imitating the kind Antioc used to do when he was active in the service, and then scampered off faster than it looked like his little blackened feet could carry him. Reiwyn giggled. My heart almost skipped a beat when she did that.
I scanned the wall with my hands cupped to my face. Uller’s night sight spell had worn off long ago, and the morning light was dim and pinkish this early. “I’ve got a formula for creating mortar out of rocks and sand. I doubt we’ll have all the ingredients here, but I’m sure Uller could help concoct a substitution.”
“What can I do?”
I looked at her and saw something I hadn’t in a long time: her smile. Not just any smile, but a smile for me. It almost got one out of me, but I withheld. Couldn’t have her seeing just how much her happiness affected me.
“I need you to teach these savages how to fire a bow properly. I can’t have people patrolling my wall who can’t defend it. I’ll put covered arrow shields at regular intervals along the wall. In the unlikely event of a siege, they can hide behind them and fire down on any attackers.” I looked at her. “Can you do that?”
She nodded.
“Fair.” I turned and walked away. “I’m going to sleep.”
At least I thought I was. Instead, sleep eluded me, all day and even into the night. All I could do was stare at the sword. My nameless, battered little sword. Antioc described it as a Floorish blade. It was much like the fencing foil I’d trained with, only shorter by about six inches. I asked if the Floorish were short people to have such small blades. Antioc laughed and explained that their blades were just as long as ours, only thinner like this one. They used two swords at once and used the shorter one in their off hand. Why that Scumdog had that one without the other was anyone’s guess. He didn’t look Floorish. Maybe he had bought—or stolen—a set, but one had been broken or lost. Maybe he was only able to steal one from a Floorishman. Perhaps he had found it somewhere and thought it was just a long dagger. Whatever the case, he didn’t have much use for it and wasn’t even able to get it from his belt before Antioc had crushed his head. Before I’d taken it from his corpse, and made it red . . .
This was ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. I’d killed before. Not personally, of course. But I’d built things that had killed. Big things. Trebuchets and catapults, scorpions and ballistae; all manner of killing devices had been constructed and operated under my watch and command. I’d even pulled the lever on a few of them. It was a source of pride for an engineer to be the first to fire his siege engine in combat. I’d probably killed more people than Antioc. I was sure that I had.
This was the first time I’d done it face-to-face, though. The first time I’d looked at someone as they died. Taking a life is no small thing. Antioc had talked about that more times than I was comfortable remembering. To look into a man’s eyes and see that you’ve taken everything from him . . . that’s something else entirely. To be able to do that, to know that you’re capable of that, changes you. Or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it just shows you what you were all along.
I wasn’t ashamed of what I’d done. Not one bit. I wasn’t proud, either. It hadn’t taken any particular measure of skill on my part. Over half the victory belonged to Uller and his spell. Without that, I’d have likely been no match for a Scumdog fighting for his life. Did that make it his fault? No, of course not. Even if it was, it didn’t matter. The Scumdog could have yielded, for all the good that would have done him. At least I wouldn’t have been the one to kill him. Better yet, he could have stayed home and not come to ours and taken two of our women and a child as slaves. This wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my choice. I didn’t want to kill him. He made me do it.
And there it was. I had no control over the situation, and that was the most frustrating, distressing part of the whole thing. People were like the gears of a well-tuned machine. They did what they did, often oblivious of the effect they had on most other parts of the mechanism, much less the whole machine. Only the engineer knew, and a good engineer could program the whole contraption to do exactly what he wanted. I could get people to do what I wanted, too. Sometimes they didn’t, and I found that most irritating. Even then, I could usually predict and compensate for their errant behavior. But this was something else. This was a man choosing to put himself in a situation where either he would die or I would, and I had no way of stopping him. I had no other choice, no alternative play, no gears to turn or mechanism to tune that would have sent him on another path. His death was like a star falling to the ear
th, blindly unaware that its trajectory would be its doom. Too fast to stop, impossible to slow, until the very end when . . . bam. It was all over. Dead. Gone. In a flash of light and a cloud of dust and fire. Bright red fire . . .
“Red,” I said when Antioc entered our yurt. His wounds had been stitched and bandaged and the blood cleaned from his flesh. He gave me a curious look.
“The sword,” I explained, holding it up. “Its name is Red.”
13.
It was three days after we saved his life that Roren Fullstag told us about the ruins of Xanas Muir.
“Thousands of years ago, some even say in the ages before men came to Eios, there lived a race of beings we would call giants. They stood a stride above a man’s head, at the least. They were blue skinned and fair haired, and it is said that they were the wisest of all beings to ever live. The ruins of their civilization dot our lands, and the lands to the East and North.
“Stories are told of a group of these beings departing their fellows when they became annoyed with attempts to separate them from their great wealth. You see, the giants did not consider themselves one race, but many. Though the same on the outside, the giants believed there were differences in the very structure of their minds and bodies that could not be seen. These races were what we would call castes, where some individuals were expected to behave in a certain manner and fulfill specific roles. A caste known as the Muir was trained to rule over the other, lesser castes, and as such lived in luxury. They enforced their rule through the military caste, the Wu, and were legitimized by the intellectual or scholar caste, the Goytei, who taught all the other castes that they must, no matter how much they wished otherwise, follow the natural order, lest they offend their gods─”
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