Beneath Ceaseless Skies #231

by Stephen Case

  Orha frowned. Brighteye shook his head.

  “I see that you do not understand. Perhaps someday you will, but I hope not.”

  “What a cruel thing to say.”

  “Oh no, child, no. I would not wish knowledge of sorcery upon my worst enemy.”

  “What about the thinnings, then,” she said, “and the cacocite, and the beasts?”

  “There are many accounts. Many words borrowed from ancient, half-forgotten traditions. The thinnings lead to hell, or the world behind, or primordial chaos. Who can say? We only know that we fear whatever lies beyond, that the thinnings breed a black crystal that poisons the soil, that those who wander in never return, and that only beasts crawl out.”

  “But where did they come from?”

  “If I knew the answer to that I would not be riding with the karwan, but called to council the kings in their cities, heralded as the greatest mind of our age.” He grinned at her, but she could not find the humor in his words.

  “No one knows?”

  “No one knows anything, my child.”

  “Well.” Orha stared at the blue sky. “That’s bleak.”

  Silence held between them. Brighteye shifted the reins in his hands and sighed.

  “It doesn’t matter, does it?” he said. “Wherever they came from, whatever caused them, they are here, now, and they shape all our lives. Any explanation could do but one of two things. Either assign blame, and so justify cruelty in the name of revenge or punishment. Or, if it were discovered that no one is to blame, that the world simply is the way that it is and we are doomed by no fault of our own, we would be left with nothing but despair.”

  “But if we knew, maybe we could fix it. Or stop it from getting worse, at least.”

  Brighteye’s eyes widened, and he laughed. “Your optimism is boundless, child. That it has survived your short life full of hardship is nothing but a miracle. Yes, perhaps we could fix it. I have no notion of how such an effort should begin.”

  Orha remembered the questions, and the want for answers, the fog of uncertainty descending with Brighteye’s words. It clung to her, and never lifted.

  She no longer wanted to fix the world. Where she found goodness, she would protect it. Where she found cruelty, she would resist. And perhaps, if she had the strength, she might leave the world better in her wake.

  She thought of these things, and followed the butcher’s trail.

  * * *

  Campfire smoke rose in a pillar that cut across the moon. Five hard days of riding, and they had caught their quarry at last. Orha tied their mounts to a gnarled tree. They checked the seals of their armor and took their swords. Orha and Abel had no need for guns. Violence was a thing they wore.

  From atop the low hill Orha studied the butcher’s camp. She saw two covered wagons laden with supplies brought from the city and trade goods ripped from the slaughtered beast. Tents were scattered haphazardly. Only two men stood watch, one facing north and the other south. The rest had gathered around a campfire. She looked for the children, and saw them huddled beside one of the wagons, far from the fire, near the hobbled horses.

  Night settled. The men went to their tents. One of the sentries, perhaps disgruntled at having been left out of a night of drinking, walked to the fire and took a bottle back to his post. One of the children cried out in hunger. The sentry spat a curse and threw a stone. The child yelped and then was silent.

  Orha crawled back to their horses at the bottom of the slope. Abel followed. He drew his sword, a wide blade of hammered iron, too heavy for a hand without armor.

  “I hope you will not need that,” Orha said. “You lead the children away while I hold their attention.”

  She could not see his face, and the bug-eyed mask betrayed no frown, but Abel stiffened at her words.

  “Why?”

  “We are not here only for vengeance, Abel.”

  He studied her, his hands tightening around the bone handle of his weapon.

  “Let me fight,” he said. “You lead the children away. The karwan needs you more than it needs me, should something go wrong.”

  “No, Abel,” she said. The black fire roiled, built pressure in her skull. She was so near to release, and not about to back away. Do you feel the same way, corporal? Do I deny you catharsis? Well, you are young, and still far from breaking. You can endure.

  Finally, he sheathed his sword.

  “Meet me at Tullis Well, when it is over,” she said. “Three days. No longer. If I do not appear, hurry on to the karwan and speak well of my death.”

  “I will,” he said. “And then I will ride out again to avenge you.”

  She shook her head, but did not scold him. Perhaps that would be the best course, if she died. She found herself thinking little of the future, beyond the bloody hour to come.

  The butchers were not expecting an attack. Orha carved the first sentry from throat to navel. The second managed a single cry of alarm before his head spun from his shoulders. Power surged through her, and her blade wailed a keening song as it split the air and wicked flesh. They came crawling from their tents, half asleep with pistols and knives to hand. Too slow. Too weak. She left them sprawled and shattered.

  Not one of them had armor. Not one of them could rival her. The few blows they managed to strike rebounded from her carapace. Their bullets flew wide, for their aim could never match the speed of her fury.

  Violence was hers that night, and she made sure they knew it, that they understood cruelty and fear before they died. Their blood and their screams splashed against her. These wicked, deserving men. And still the black fire raged, and the pressure only grew.

  She whirled, brought her sword high to strike, and froze.

  A man stood at the mouth of his tent and held a girl before him. A scar seamed the left side of his face, and another furrowed his burly arm from elbow to wrist. That arm held the girl close. He pressed the barrel of his pistol to her throat.

  “Drop the sword.” The butcher’s scar rippled as he spoke.

  The girl searched Orha’s face with eyes wide and terrified. The butcher’s finger twitched on the trigger.

  “I said drop it!”

  Orha’s hands tightened around the bone handle of her sword. Breath came shallow. If she lunged she might stave in his head. Thirty paces, she counted. No distance at all, in armor.

  “Lower it, I said!”

  No distance at all.

  Black fire raged. Steam built behind her eyes. The bones of her arms shuddered, enraged, ready to kill.

  No distance, but all the distance in the world.

  Her hands opened. Gunshots ripped the air. Two bullets hammered her armor. It cracked and she fell, screaming. No distance! But he had been crueler. More willing.

  Violence, in the end, had been his.

  * * *

  She remembered something else. Something that Brighteye had said. There had been a long pause, while they passed the thinning, but as they left it behind he had turned to her.

  “We may not be able to fix the world, Orha,” he had said, “but this is what we can do. Protect compassion where it is found. Resist cruelty when it rears its head. To go on, in spite of the brokenness, is the greatest defiance. Do that, and perhaps the world will be a better place, if only where you tread.”

  She remembered, as she lay sprawled in her broken armor, while the butcher with his scar stood over her and, grinning, shot her in the forehead.

  * * *

  It did not kill her, she realized when she woke to the pounding in her head and the burning ache in all her bones. She sat on hard ground, her wrists bound and wrenched to one side. Her back pressed against something rough, hard, and thin as a rail. A phantom ringing dulled all sound, and the pain behind her eyes glued them shut.

  Not only the pain. Blood. Her armor had deflected the bullet, but it had scored a furrow in her scalp.

  “Wake up.”

  She gasped as frigid water splashed her face. Her eyes fluttered open
of their own accord. She saw the world in spinning color. The butcher grinned at her, with his scar and his pistol, which he tapped against the side of his head as he watched her sputter.

  “Not much time left, and I’ve some questions before you die.”

  He squatted. His eyes drifted down to the smallclothes Orha wore beneath her armor. The only things she wore, now, which clung to her, damp as they were. When he had satisfied the urge to leer, the butcher again met her gaze.

  She ignored him. The rage that had burned within her had been dampened to a fading ember. Had Abel managed to save the other children? She saw only the butcher’s hostage, the girl, there behind him. The others, then, must have escaped. Perhaps Orha’s death would not be meaningless. There was some comfort in that.

  The butcher drew his mouth into a line, shook his head, and drove his fist into her belly.

  She retched, then slumped, held up only by the thin rope that bit her wrists. He reached into the pocket of his vest and withdrew a brass pocket watch, checked the time, then clicked it shut.

  “You haven’t got time to waste on lip, woman,” he said. “You forget that I broke your armor. You’re weak and pink like the rest of us. No more carapace. Now, to my questions.”

  He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the girl, who stood beside a thick stand of shrubs where Orha saw seven men hiding, their guns in hand. She stood like a dead thing stuffed with cotton and felt. Motionless. Empty-eyed.

  “We thought for sure no one would come looking for those waste-urchins. Then there you were, and that coward who never showed her face, come to murder the better half of my boys and steal our hard-won bait. And I’m asking, first, who in the hell you are, and second, why in the hell you care.”

  Orha had been nothing but coals inside, but his words were a bellows on her heart.

  “Who are you, butcher?”

  “Who am I?” He rolled back on his heels with a quizzical expression. “A hunter, and that’s all. A man out to make his living and rid the world of a few monstrosities.” He grinned. “Just trying to do my part.”

  “You’re worse than any beast.” Orha sputtered.

  “Oh, that’s not true.” He flipped open the pocket watch again, then clicked it shut. He drew his brows together, as though returning to some oft-contemplated thought. “At worst I’m of the same caliber as a beast. These villages out here, they can’t survive. It’s only a matter of time before something gets them, either the cacocite or a rampaging beast. I’m no crueler than nature itself.”

  He opened the pocket watch again, turned its face toward her. A picture had been pasted to the inside of the cover. Three children, dressed in finer clothes than Orha had ever seen.

  “I’ve got a family to feed back home. Children with bright futures to provide for, unlike these waste-urchins. Might as well get use out of them—”

  “Use?” Orha said through her teeth. The black fires rumbled back to life. “You don’t know anything. You speak as though these children are doomed, but they aren’t. The waste—the world—is cruel, but we survive. Yet you rob them of even that chance, and for what? A fresh shirt for your son?”

  A heavy thud beat the ground, rolled through the earth. Then another, louder, and another. She knew the tread of beasts like she knew her own voice. Her heart began to pound.

  The butcher stood. “Time’s up. Guess I’ll track your friend down. Have to get my property back anyway. Maybe she’ll be more forthcoming.”

  He shook his head, stuffed the watch into his pocket, then ran to take cover with his men. The girl shuddered at his passing.

  Another footfall shook the earth. Orha strained against her bonds and craned her neck. The beast lumbered toward her on twisted, many-jointed limbs. Its head swung back and forth. Seven eyes, terribly human in shape but black as the eyes of carrion crows, fixed on her.

  She had faced down beasts before, but always either wearing armor or at a distance with a gun in her hand. Her bonds cut into her wrists. The rope was too strong, and the stake driven too deep.

  This will not be how I die! She ground her teeth. Bound and powerless. The black fire raged. The beast’s next footfall was near enough to shake her bones. She heard its ragged breathing, slow and rasping like a broken bellows. A musk like rotting flowers filled her nose. She had never smelled it so clearly. She had never been so near without her helmet.

  It loomed over her, its seven eyes narrowing.

  This will not be how I die!

  But it would be.

  And so many died in just the same way. Not gored by beasts, but staring down death inevitable just the same. Slow sicknesses that stole life in bits and pieces. Sudden traumas predicated only by a rush of fear and burst of pain. They were a lucky few who died happily in their sleep after a long life fully lived. Most people died badly. Why should she be any different?

  In the end, even the vengeance she longed for had escaped her. And if it had been hers, what would it have mattered? A few cruel men slain, a few brutalized children saved, but only for a moment. Brutality would come again. Cruelty would always rear its head, and compassion was so vulnerable, so impossible to protect.

  The beast lowered its head, seven eyes blinking, and breathed the scent of her. She met its gaze. Her body shuddered. Her bones ached. The pressure built and pressed within her, and her body was a weak vessel, too thin, too powerless.

  She would not shut her eyes. She would not go quietly. Blood trickled from her hairline, stung her eye. Pain pulsed where bullets had broken her armor and bruised her. Her hands quivered and clutched the air.

  The world was broken. It could not be made right. And Orha would die, badly, finally knowing this.

  A scream, empty of fear and full of fury, tore itself from her throat. And with it the dam that held back the pressure of her rage gave way. So let it burn.

  The pressure that filled her skull poured through the furrow in her scalp. Where the pressure had fled, power rushed in, like the first sweet breath after drowning. Black fire followed behind.

  With a grunt of surprise, the beast was gone. Where it had stood, there burned a black wall of flame. Flames she recognized. Brighteye had used them, only once, to save the karwan from certain destruction.

  A sob broke from Orha, and she staggered to her feet. The rope was gone, and the stake. The things she hated, one by one, ripped from the fabric of the world.

  She turned her eyes on the butcher, who aimed his pistol, and then was gone.

  Not enough.

  Never enough. He was not the only butcher in the world. The world bred them, the cruel. White-armored in the cities. Raiders on the waste. These hideous profiteers. Symptoms. Consequences of a greater brokenness. Something unfixable. Something worthless.

  The world is not for me and my kind, Orha thought, as the fires poured out from her, directionless, a lashing out at every cruelty suffered and imagined and yet to come.

  She raised her hand, put it to the seam of the world, ready for the final unraveling.

  “Stop!”

  A sob reached through the flames. A fog lifted. Orha saw the girl, on her knees, tear-streaked and pleading.

  “Please, please stop!”

  A moment passed, and the fires went out.

  * * *

  It took them a while to calm one of the butcher’s horses. The creatures were skittish around Orha, in much the same way they were skittish around the beasts and thinnings. She felt a pang of guilt while the girl, Saelle, stroked the creature’s neck and whispered calming words.

  Her fingers drifted up to the furrow along her scalp. It no longer bled. Its surface felt smooth, hard, and cold. She imagined a line of black glass glimmering there, and shivered.

  I have lost my armor, she thought, while Saelle held the horse and bade her mount. Violence is a thing inside me, now, held in only by this brittle seam.

  A seam she could tear loose, at any moment, to let free again the black fires.

  The fires she had loosed upon
the world had died. Those she carried within still burned, fiercely as ever, and would never stop, she knew. This was what Brighteye had meant. She now understood why he had not been able to answer her questions. It was not a thing to speak of easily, and never with one who had not felt it. To go on, broken. The greatest defiance.

  Orha took the reins with Saelle sitting behind her on the saddle. The girl wrapped her arms tight around Orha. She was so slight. So young to have already suffered so much.

  A pang of deep sadness shook her and stirred the black fires. But the pang was good. It told her that she had not given in, that her heart still felt for the world. She could endure.

  Is this what Brighteye feels, when he looks at me? I begin to understand him, more and more. He would be deeply saddened, she knew, when she told him, as she would be to learn that Saelle, or Abel, or any other person with a good and compassionate soul had reached that breaking point, that place where the world itself is the enemy, and irredeemable, and the only path left leads to obliteration.

  Not the only path, she reminded herself. Saelle had led her back. She wondered who had been that person for Brighteye, and what had become of them.

  Abel was there, after all, with three stolen mounts and the five children. At the sight of them Saelle gasped in happiness and scrambled out of the saddle. She raced over and caught up the two smallest in her arms. It was the first time Orha had seen her smile.

  “I thought you were dead.” Abel’s voice was muffled by his mask.

  “Then you should have moved on.”

  He tilted his head quizzically. “But Captain, you said three days. If I’d disobeyed you’d have bitten my head off.”

  “How long has it been?”

  “Today is the third,” he said. “We should hurry on. Brighteye will be fearing for our lives.”

  * * *

  The karwan folded the children into the patterns of its life. Strays were common enough, and most strays carried trauma. The karwan could not take those hurts away, and Orha knew that the lives they should have lived would always haunt them. So it was for most in the karwan. So it was, Orha had come to realize, for most good people in the world.