Ascending Shadows

by Everet Martins

  The last of the group stopped to bend down low to peer inside her cart, scowling at the gruesome sight, raising his whiskered face to show rows of glistening teeth. His big cat’s eyes swept over the cart, and he softly growled. His mount mirrored him, giving a rumbling growl that made a horse squeal.

  Senka’s eyes went wide, and she slithered to the back of her cart, her heart trying to jump out from her chest. “I mean you no harm.” She raised her chained hands in a show of deference, hoped he didn’t see the blood covering them. “I didn’t do this, didn’t want this.” She gestured at the gore mounted on the ceiling. “They tried to kill me. Can you help us?”

  “Hey! What are you doing? Don’t need you damned merchants inspecting my wares. Do I inspect yours?” Scab shouted. “Buzz off! We’ve a lot of ground to cover tonight.”

  “Please,” Senka whispered, her tongue sticking to her inner cheeks.

  The mounted beast gave a snort and shook its head like a dog, its triangular ears twiddling. The beast was so very much like the Tigerians, as if they were a less evolved version of themselves. Senka thought it might be like a man riding a Rock Gorilla on the Mountains of Misery.

  The Tigerian reached a fuzzy hand into a sack at the beast’s side and fished around for something with the sound of glass bottles clinking together. It pulled out a corked bottle, held its yellowy oil up to the torch light and gave a pleased nod.

  The Tigerian gestured for her to take it, inching it between the iron bars. “For me?” Senka asked.

  The Tigerian snorted and gestured for her to take it again. She inched forward, taking it in trembling fingers. “What is it?” she asked.

  The Tigerian snorted, pointed at his ribs covered in sheets of stitched together leather, then pointed at Senka. She peered down at the bottle in her hands and gave the oil a shake, then watched how the oily fingers crawled down its sides. “Ribwort oil.” She felt herself involuntarily grinning. “Thank you, sir! Thank you!”

  “What did I tell you?” Scab shouted. “Fucking merchants. Corin! Get them moving, would you?”

  “There’s six of them,” Corin said with a touch of reluctance.

  “Do I have to do everything myself? What am I paying you for?”

  Corin grunted, his horse snorting and cautiously stepped alongside the Tigerian who helped her. “Move along, would you? Don’t want any trouble tonight. I’m sure you don’t either.” He inched a sword from its sheath, shining bright and reflecting the Tigerian’s torchlight.

  The Tigerian hissed, gave Senka a passing nod and heeled its mount to move. She nodded back and mouthed “thank you” once more. The beast plodded on, echoing footfalls thumping down the line of carts. How many more carts were there, she wondered? Were they all savages like these three? Judging by the number of slaves and the size of the wagon, there must have been at least four. How many Tigerians would it take to rip Scab and Corin into shreds? Corin seemed like he knew how to use his weapons, maybe it would take two for him. Scab, on the other hand, seemed less than capable. That blade arm of his seemed more of an encumbrance than a weapon. The thumping of the giant cats faded, and the carts screeched into motion, her hopes of getting out going with them.

  It was time to do what needed to be done. Senka sat and took a few long breaths, steadying her heart and nerves for the misery to come. She wrapped both of her hands around the piece of wood, her fingers slipping against a layer of slime and crusted blood. She blew out a long breath, gripped it tightly as she could, tendons and muscle springing from her forearms. This was it.

  “On three,” she told herself. “One… two… three!” She let go and angrily sighed. Why couldn’t she do it? It was simple. All she had to do was pull the piece of wood out, she told herself. She had to do it. She’d die if she didn’t. “Alright. Once more,” she whispered and shook her head, re-gripped the wood. There was no time for hesitation. She screamed and pulled with all she had, felt it squelching out of her side, tearing open partially formed scabs, strings of pain zinging up her body. She let out a shuddering moan, let the wood slip from trembling fingers. It hit the floor with a thud and rolled into a corner.

  She had to work quick. She grunted as she lunged for a needle stuck between two floor boards. “Damn it,” she hissed. Why hadn’t she prepared all of this ahead of time? She knew her mind wasn’t working right then, Angel’s Moss infiltrating her mental clarity. She felt hot blood rolling down her side and pooling on her hip. A feeling of weightlessness fluttered through her head as if she might float away in a strong enough wind. She scratched and wriggled her fingers, trying to grasp the needle an iota out of reach. “Dragons,” she barked. She had gnawed her nails to nubs last night, rendering her fingers utterly inept for the task at hand. It gave her some comfort then, smoothed out the cutting call of Angel’s Moss. Would the price for biting her nails be her life?

  The world swam in blues and blacks. Solids slipped in and out of focus. She pressed her hand tight to her side, staunching the blood’s flow. The other needle. She kicked Fat Belly over onto his side, tumbling onto Derwood’s battered corpse. There it was, amazingly still held between Curly’s thumb and index finger. She carefully snatched it with a victorious whoop, started unraveling a length of string from her soiled shirt. “I’ll be okay, alright,” she breathed.

  She crawled to the back of the cart, popped the cork on the flask the Tigerian had given her and gave it a sniff. The oil smelled fresh, an odd mix of earth and maple syrup. She spilled a bit on the string, on her needle and drizzled it on the wound channel. She felt like she was basting herself to be roasted and would have laughed if she hadn’t known she was dying. She closed her eyes and worked by feeling alone, threading the two ragged flaps of flesh back together. She fainted twice during the procedure, each time awoken by the cart going over a particularly deep pothole. It was finally done though, padding her fingers at the flesh matting together, only seeping sticky blood now.

  At some point, she woke. Time became a thing unknown to her, as if night was all there ever was. The moon shone in her eyes, bright and amber, far too much like the eyes of Death Spawn. The clouds shifted and snuffed out the glow of the moon in bulbous sheets of gray and black. More time passed and the world went black as night, rumbling and thunderclaps ringing out and trying to split the world in half. Then the sky cracked, and rain came in fat droplets. The roof pattered like someone was dropping stones upon it. The wind drove it through the bars, washing over the floor in shimmering streaks.

  She stripped herself nude and spread her arms and legs wide, blood, dirt, dust, and clinging salt washing away in the torrent. She scrubbed her hair, armpits, and nether regions, laughing all the while. “Yes! Thank you,” she said into the rain blowing over her in sheets. She pressed herself against the bars. Joyous shouts came from the other carts, and she was surprised to hear them over the roaring water. The force of it made her skin sting like the air carried needles. “Thank you! By the Phoenix, by the Dragon, thank you.” She never loved water more than that moment.

  She opened her mouth and giggled as she swallowed it by the mouthful. She swished it around her mouth, swallowing in painful gulps. She drank as much as she could, knowing there might be another long stretch before she got it again. It was the purest, most tasteless water she’d ever had. It cleansed the sand from her throat, blood from her side, dirt from around her eyes, and slime from her hair. She cleaned her needles and washed her clothing in the rain, ringing out rivulets of muddy water.

  She plucked the organs from the walls with disgust, flung them out from between the bars before the smell brought those damned flies. “Just organs, just like a cow,” she muttered. She dragged the dead to the front of the cart where they’d get the most water, stripping away all their blood and choking feces. And just as soon as it started, it was over. The rain became a heavy mist before giving way to a wall of humidity.

  She knew that all good things must end, and all good things did not come without a price. The carts dragged
on during all of this, uncaring of the water. Scab mercilessly pushed the horse team onward through the squelching mud, wheels sinking into the shifting road and carving deep furrows. Senka spread her clothing out to dry on the cart’s floor, both needles once again stowed under her bracers.

  Then the cold came. She shivered, huddled in a corner and out of the majority of the wind’s onslaught. It wasn’t enough. The wind sucked the heat from her bones, made her hair feel like it might be on the verge of freezing, though it was a long way from that. The Nether was always scorchingly hot, and she hadn’t grown accustomed to the cold of New Breden, despite her years there. Her mind vacillated between wondering where she’d find Angel’s Moss and how they’d get out of these forsaken wagons. She spent the rest of the evening that way, her body shivering from the cold and fingers trembling for the call of Angel’s Moss. Where would she find it here?

  TWELVE

  Debts

  “With the deepest of sorrows, laws become meaningless.” – The diaries of Nyset Camfield

  It was cool and peaceful for a time. It was a precious few moments that Isa hoped would never end. He was relieved to finally be clean, to have escaped a painful death by dehydration. The blistering heat returned with the rise of the sun, the cart hammering away at the wounds on his back. He found a new appreciation for the brick roads in New Breden and around the Tower. The bleeding had stopped, and they healed a bit, but most of all, he was glad they were clean. Infection was his gravest worry. Granted, his wounds weren’t as clean as they could be with Ribwort oil, but you had to choose your battles. His cuts had formed a matted layer of pus, his shirt and scabs bonded as one. It’d be a painful day when he would have to separate the two. They were healing though, and that was what mattered.

  He had nightmares about the Tigerians they saw last night. Sleep came in disjointed spurts. He saw and felt their fearsome mounts tearing into him, sinking their claws into his back and finishing him with those grisly fangs. He imagined trying to fight back but being pinned down by their equally fearsome riders. He thought they might have been exceedingly lucky that those were only merchants. He couldn’t imagine how their warriors might have looked. He thought of how terrifying it must have been for Midgaard to defend against their siege over five-hundred years ago, known in Zoria as the Trial of Devastation.

  The sky ignited in bands of orange, yellow, and bleeding pinks. It was glorious and strangely unexpected after last night’s torrential rains. Last night, he thought the old Shadow Realm itself might have opened above them, the purified Shadow Realm rising up with the sun. He watched the sky change at a barely perceptible pace, the strips of color blown away in the sun’s violent heat.

  There were murmuring voices at the front of the carts ahead of theirs. Devyn and Greyson cast him curious glances as if he might know what was happening. The forest finally broke away, showing rolling hills on their right, dotted with swaying grasses, the likely source of the clamor. Everything was so stunningly beautiful here. It was relieving to be out of the choking forest, out of the world where towering vegetation was all you could see. He almost never wanted to live near a city again. The land became expansive plains after the hills, the occasional tree that had escaped the forest casting clawing shadows across the road. It wound like a snake in the distance, up and down between rolling valleys swathed in squat greens and bright red flowers.

  The forest was a murky strip of green in the distance. Behind them, it stopped abruptly as if there were some force preventing it from growing here. There wasn’t a natural thinning of the trees, not unless you counted the odd solitary tree standing like a sentry over the grasslands. It all just stopped.

  They traveled this way for a few hours, watching the trackless land rolling past in sullen quiet. Carrion birds circled them, screeching at their potential meals. There was something in the distance, the telltale signs of smoke rising up like pillars trying to support the sky. It reminded him of the first village they encountered.

  “That the capital?” Isa asked.

  Greyson derisively laughed. “You really know nothing, don’t you, white one?” Greyson’s skin was almost as white as Isa’s now, red hair bright as a clear ruby. He looked at least five years younger now that he was cleaned, maybe in his early twenties.

  “Raiders,” Devyn grated with a shake of his head. He started stroking his beard, jet black after last night’s washing.

  Isa saw it now. It was far too much smoke to be cookfires. The smoke was coming from everywhere, from the roofs to what must have been the walls. It was a fairly large village, maybe fifty or so dwellings by his guess.

  “We’ve seen ‘em before. Always keeping to the far distance, maybe we’re protected somehow. Maybe Scab has an agreement,” Devyn said, tugging on his beard now.

  “Or maybe they know we’re all but worthless,” Greyson added with a wry smile.

  “You’re a right regular ball of sunshine, aren’t you?” Isa gazed at Greyson. There was something familiar about him. Something about that red hair that dragged on an ancient memory. Maybe he had seen him during his passing times in Midgaard.

  “Just being realistic. Something the rest of you ought to learn to do,” he said with a sniff. He slipped off his tunic for the third time that morning and gave it a hard ringing, letting the brown drops of water fall into his mouth.

  “Raiders have a name?” Isa asked.

  Greyson shrugged, his tongue lapping at his shirt.

  “Heard Scab call them the Whisperers. Can’t confirm nor deny the name, but that’s what I’ve been going with.”

  “Know why they call them that?” Isa forced himself to stand, pressing out his hips and stretching his back. Scabs popped and cracked open, weeping with new blood. He stifled a grunt.

  “How should I know?” Devyn stood and turned to face the landscape, hairy hands grasping the rust-streaked bars.

  Isa joined him. “You seem like a man who knows things.”

  Devyn shook his head. “Been here too long. Too long in this prison, in these damned chains.” He tugged on the bars, not giving an iota of movement.

  Isa narrowed his eyes at a dark shape in the distance, letting it come into focus. There was a small group of riders cresting a bald hilltop south of the burning village. There might have been white flags raised from their Tigerian mounts. They slipped under the shadows of a tree. “Maybe you’ll get your chance,” he muttered into Devyn’s ear, then nodded at the gathering group. He counted thirteen Tigerians in all, each on mounts.

  “No,” Devyn breathed. “I’ve seen them watching us before. They never come.” He pressed a finger to one nostril and blew a line of snot out of the other side. He then unceremoniously dropped his trousers and started pissing out the side of the cart.

  “A little notice when I’m standing beside you would be great,” Isa grunted and had to suppress the urge to slap him like a Swiftshade apprentice. “No respect.” He turned his back to him to watch the pack of Whisperers fade into the distance, air going hazy with the onset of the day’s heat.

  “Sorry, mate. Hard to care about things anymore. Before long, I’ll be like those two,” Devyn nodded at the two emaciated men, never making a sound, not even a whimper. Always staring at nothing, skin sagging off their bones and tanned as leather.

  Isa couldn’t help but give them a pitiful glare. “If I’m ever like that, slit my throat, would you?” He said over his shoulder to Devyn.

  “Will do. So long as you promise to do the same for me,” Devyn said, his hand clapping him on the shoulder.

  “Get your piss hand off me, you shit.” Isa grinned and pushed his hand away while Devyn chuckled.

  “Who never comes?” Greyson asked, squatting with his arms wrapped around his knees, shirt draped behind his neck.

  “The Whisperers,” Isa answered. “So he says.”

  “Huh. Guess that’s something good then.” Greyson started wiping his arms, trying to scrub off the non-existent dirt.

  “What are
those mounts the Tigerians ride?” Isa asked, turning back to him now that his cock was stowed in his trousers.

  “Tougeres. Run wild in the north, takes years to get ‘em tame enough to be saddled. Even then, can turn on you in an instant.”

  “Said from experience?” Isa raised a brow at him.

  “Oh, yes. Wonderful animals. Had one to work the farm. Far more endurance than a horse, more strength, but they need a firm hand. Intelligent beasts too. Always trying to find a way to get more food.” Devyn smiled at what looked to be a distant memory.

  “Like a horse otherwise?”

  “Somewhat,” he shrugged. “Voracious appetites… eat meat mostly, and whatever else they can get their teeth on. Oh those teeth, they’re as menacing as they look. Had mine defanged and declawed.”

  Isa furrowed his brow at Devyn. He hated to admit that he had a soft spot for animals, especially when they didn’t have any way to help themselves. He wasn’t one to push away a perfectly cooked steak but liked remaining ignorant of their suffering.

  “Don’t gimme that look.” Devyn crossed his arms, leaning between the bars so his shoulder slipped through.

  “What look?”

  “That look.”

  Isa scratched his head and made his face relax.

  “I know,” Devyn went on. “Not the nicest thing, but either me or them. Wasn’t going to be me, not my family. Even then, they could still easily break a man in two.”

  “Huh. Maybe I’ll wrangle one once I’m out of here.”

  Devyn let out a hearty laugh, and Greyson sneered at the floorboards, lost in his own internal battles. The group went quiet as they were once again hemmed in by the environment.

  The carts started winding between hills at either side, craggy rock faces crumbling and piling scree upon the road. Grasses as tall as a man danced on the breeze from the tops of the hills, maybe fifty feet up. They were almost shear at the top from what must have been hundreds of years of erosion. The haste in which the landscape transformed amazed him, from dense forest to plains to valleys in a span of hours. He’d never seen anything like it in Zoria. Isa thought then that he’d like to travel more.