by Sam Sykes
Gratification later, she reminded herself. Work now.
She scanned the square, careful not to let the fact that this was becoming routine keep her from noticing something subtle, like a chest rising and falling. She crept over to a man, glanced over his body.
Dark-skinned Djaalic, civilian clothes, no beard; young man, probably a merchant’s apprentice, strong and able-bodied. He stared up at the sky with a concussed look, bleeding from a gash in his temple. Shallow wound, she noted, not threatening.
“Can you hear me?” she asked, leaning over and looking into his eyes. Glazed, but they swiveled to stare into hers: conscious, awake, coherent.
“I… I think I got hit,” he said, breathlessly. “I didn’t want to come to work today. But Master Hassun said we had to go to Silktown. I told him the fashas weren’t letting anyone in but…” His voice drifted off. He swallowed hard. “We were going and the foreigners came out and everything just kind of went—”
“Stop,” she interrupted. There would be time for this later. “Your wound isn’t serious. Looks like you just got clipped.”
The glaze slid from his eyes, and the face softened in recognition. “You’re the northerner,” he said. “The one who works with Aturach over at the temple. They say you—”
She interrupted again. “Can you walk?” There would be time for this never.
He struggled to his elbows, looked at her. “Yeah. Yeah, I can walk.”
“Great,” she replied, grabbing him by the arm and hoisting him ungently to his feet. “Then you can help carry people.” She pointed to her volunteers. “Go tell them you’re here to help and do what they say.”
“What?” He looked at her, astonished. “I just watched my master and all my friends get killed. They said you were merciful, that you’d—”
“I am merciful.” Her voice was cold and straight as a scalpel. “That’s why I’m offering you a choice of helping or waiting for death instead of hurrying you along myself.” She sneered. “There are only two kinds of people in this square: corpses or help. If you’re not one, then I can damn well leave you here until you turn into the other.”
His mouth hung open at that and she held her breath.
You’ve done it this time, she thought. Pushed him too far. He’s going to lock up, freeze, sit here and wait to die like you told him. Or worse, he’ll go and tell the others what you said and no one will trust you. Damn it. How the hell am I supposed to know how far to push?
Lenk would have known. Kataria, too. Gariath would have had people marching in lockstep with just a look.
But none of them were here right now. It was only Asper, staring the man down, holding her breath. And a little thought, so soft and silent that it might not have even been hers, speaking from a very quiet, very dark place in the back of her mind.
Strike this one. The rest will follow.
She clenched her teeth to keep the horror from showing on her face.
“Northern bitch,” the man finally muttered before turning and shuffling toward one of the volunteers, leaning over to help her with a wounded man.
Yeah, she thought. He’ll be fine. Send him to the Temple of Ancaa, though.
She would have taken him along anyway, even if he had refused. Just as she would have taken along anyone she had threatened. Thus far, though, no one had been able or willing to call her bluff. Hence her productive volunteer force.
“Come on, come on,” Dransun barked from the alley mouth. “Get them out of sight. We’ll take the backstreets back to Temple Row.” He looked to Asper. “You almost done?”
“Almost,” she called back.
He nodded, shepherding the volunteers and their wounded and dead back into the alley. More walking than not, she noted, only two dead and only one of them a child.
A good day, she thought.
And something inside her cracked, just a little.
No, not a good day. How could a day with just one dead child be considered good? How could this day be better than any of the others, all of them riddled with corpses and bloodstained streets and glassy eyes staring up at the cinders drifting over the breeze?
I can’t do this. From that tiny crack inside her, the thoughts came leaking out. I’m not made for this. I’m not a warrior, I shouldn’t be here. This shouldn’t be happening. She looked skyward, as though if she screamed loud enough, someone in heaven might hear her. THIS SHOULDN’T BE HAPPENING!
A sharp, warbling wail cut her thoughts in twain. Somewhere in the distance, a war horn sounded. The crack inside her fused itself shut as her pulse quickened and her breath returned to fevered rapidity.
Fear had its uses.
“Priestess!” Dransun called out. He gesticulated wildly to the alley mouth. “We have to go now.”
She nodded, moved to join him. She took care not to hop over the bodies left behind; it seemed somehow more respectful to step around them. And yet the moment she felt a hand reach out and wrap around her ankle, she realized that practicality, too, had its uses.
“Please.” A pained groan rose from the cobblestones. “Please… help…”
She saw bloodied hands grasping the hem of her robe. But past that she saw a blue coat, a pale-skinned northern face, a tricornered hat on a mop of unruly flaxen hair. And emblazoning every part of that coat in which one could conceivably put it was the Six-Pointed Star of Saine.
A Sainite.
A soldier.
Bleeding profusely from his belly, if the long red smear on the cobblestones showing where he had pulled himself to get to her was any indication. He looked at her with a blank expression, in too much pain to show any fear or desperation.
“Help…,” he groaned. “Please.”
“We’re Talanites,” she replied, as coldly as she could manage. “Neutral. We can’t take any soldiers.”
“Hurts. Hurts so bad, please.”
“I can’t.” She could feel herself forcing the words through clenched teeth. “I can’t.”
“Please… please…”
He wasn’t hearing her. Of course, why would he? She could barely hear herself. She glanced over to the alley mouth, saw that Dransun was wildly shaking his head and gesticulating no, no, and fuck no in profoundly fearsome gesture. And yet, past him, she saw that her volunteers and the wounded had all disappeared. No one had seen him. No one had to know. She could take the man’s coat, burn it, pretend he was—
Dransun caught her eye again. His gesticulation became wild flailing. What was he trying to say? He hadn’t taught her those hand signals he was using. She squinted, made the signal for repeat. Dransun pointed to his lips, mouthed the words carefully. And on the third try, she finally understood what he was saying.
Behind you.
Too late.
“Priestess.” A heavy voice, heavier even than the sound of iron soles stepping over cobblestones, reached her. “You should not be here.”
His black plate armor rattled with every step, the sound of a miniature thunderclap. He carried himself with a proud bearing, straight and unyielding as the long sword at his hip. In the smooth darkness of his face, shorn of every bit of hair on cheek or scalp, the wrinkles of a man approaching middle age were beginning to form. Yet these were mere lines in a face unmarred by emotion, whether pity or anger.
Speaker Careus, Most Honored Envoy of the Holy Empire of Karneria and Voice of Daeon the Conqueror, was used to such sights as the carnage that surrounded him.
“Speaker Careus,” she replied. She caught the quaver in her voice, quashed it immediately. She might not be a warrior, but she knew how to speak with them. “You know why I’m here. You agreed to honor the terms of our mission.” She narrowed her eyes. “Are you here to renegotiate?”
And normally, she knew how to speak to priests. To challenge Careus’s honor would be to invite him to prove he was honorable, as any priest would do. And as any warrior would do, Careus would usually prove his honor by the biggest, most obnoxious show of force he could possibly t
hink of.
Daeonists, Asper thought, resignedly.
“Sweeps for Sainite forces are currently under way,” Careus replied. “We mean no harm.”
“We,” Asper noted. Of course, with Karnerians, there’s always a “we.”
And “we” made themselves known in quick time. From the opposite end of the square, they filed in: sandaled feet in perfect lockstep, spears high and proud over helmeted heads, black tower shields drinking in what light remained of the morning. A Karnerian regiment, every piece of metal polished to obsidian, came to a harmonious halt at a single wave from Careus.
“Given the corpses around here,” Asper replied, “I’d say whatever you mean seems to have little bearing on what you do.”
“Instructions were handed to civilians to evacuate areas of conflict,” the speaker replied. “The gluttonous and greedy that lingered in hopes of profiteering have wrought their own fate.”
“You’ve made their entire homes into areas of—”
“Our holy charge remains the same as it ever was.” Careus spoke over her, eyes drifting down to the Sainite clutching at her leg. “Preserve the city and its people. And to do so, we must cleanse it of interloping pagans.” His sword came out of its scabbard in a long, ringing note. “If our purpose is doubted, then let action clarify.”
She cried out something between a curse and a plea. The sound of the Sainite’s scream was thick and wet, something that filled the spaces between flesh separating and ribs cracking beneath steel. He spasmed as Careus withdrew the blade, lying still only when the life leaked out of him to stain her boots black.
Karnerian culture was something she understood only slightly better than the Sainite, if only because Karneria bowed to a god rather than a monarch. But she knew enough of speakers to know that they were the word of their god, and thus she had always assumed them to be creatures of stoic dignity and contemplation.
“You unspeakable ass!”
Careus’s frown suggested that speakers were certainly not used to being called that.
“He was wounded!” she snarled. “He was begging for aid!”
“Aid you are not legally permitted to offer by the terms of our agreement,” Careus replied coolly, stepping aside as the Sainite’s blood oozed toward his plated boot.
“You could have let him go! You could have taken him prisoner! You could have done anything but that!”
“That is where you are incorrect, priestess,” he said, voice cold. “In service to Daeon, the Empire of Karneria can do only as the Conqueror wills. And the Conqueror wills that this city be—”
The air screamed. Careus made a sudden sound. And whether it was a curse or a prayer he shrieked, she wasn’t quite sure. As it turned out, it was rather hard to make sense when one had a crossbow bolt lodged in one’s shoulder.
“Like that, you Karnie fuck?” a shrill voice cried from somewhere on high. “Hold still, I got another one for you.”
Careus tore the bolt free with his left hand; no blood followed, Asper noted, meaning it had failed to pierce the armor. His right shot up, clenching into a fist. The Karnerian soldiers responded to the silent command, their leader barking a swift order.
They surged in good order, engulfing both Careus and Asper before she could get away. Their shields formed a solid square, held over their heads to protect from the few stray bolts that followed.
Through the cracks in the defense, Asper looked to the roofs of the square. Blue coats fluttered in the breeze, tricornered hats stark and black atop fair-haired heads. A small squadron of Sainites crouched upon a roof, and standing brazenly at their forefront was a wiry woman with a snarl that could be seen even from so far down.
“Blacksbarrow,” Careus muttered from beside Asper. He glowered at one of the nearby soldiers. “How far away are our archers?”
“Two squares away, Speaker,” the soldier replied. “Do we send a runner?”
“He’d be shot down before he even left the phalanx. That pagan harpy has us pinned down tighter than—”
Before he could finish, one of the shields rattled as another crossbow bolt ricocheted off it.
“C’mon out of there, Careus!” the woman called Blacksbarrow shouted. “We got business to settle, you and I! That was my cousin you just gutted like a dog!”
“Another one?” Careus shouted back. “How many more of your inbred relatives must I slay before I finally dislodge you from this wound of a city, pagan?”
“Every man here is my brother! Every woman my sister! Saine is family, you Karnie fuck! And every gods-damned one of us looks out for each other. Now are you going to come out and die like a man or am I going to have to come down there and knock?”
Careus held his breath, spoke an order to the unit. “Stay in fist formation. Protect the priestess at all costs.”
“I’m neutral, Speaker,” Asper said. “If you let me speak to her, I can—”
“You cannot trust a pagan’s word, priestess. Their vile cliff god will hold them to no account.” He shouted through a crack in the shields, “Accustom yourself to this chill, Blacksbarrow! You will miss it when you burn!”
“Yeah, that’s what I was hopin’ you’d say.”
Her laughter was coarse and nasty, the sort one heard only in the seediest of taverns at the dirtiest of jokes. The warbling bugle call that followed was shrill and tinny, a jagged piece of metal ripping a wound in the sky.
And still, neither sound was quite so spine-clenchingly horrible as the ones that followed.
A shrill avian cry. The beat of great feathery wings.
And the panic of men.
“BIRDS INCOMING!” one of the Karnerian soldiers screamed. “SCRAWS, SPEAKER! THEY BROUGHT SCRAWS!”
“Vile pagans,” Careus snarled. His voice rose to a commanding bellow. “Re-form! Wheeling phalanx! Assemble!”
Whatever fear might have been in the quavering of their voices as they acknowledged the command, it was not enough to keep the Karnerians from reassembling into a wedge formation, the broad end aimed at the rooftops and Asper held tightly in the middle.
But whatever courage might have been in the raising of their shields, it was not enough to keep her confidence against what came rising over the rooftops.
They came like storm clouds upon the sky, long goatlike bodies ending in jagged hooves and beginning in sharp raptor talons. Their eyes, bright and unblinking with animal ferocity, shone as sharp as their spear-like beaks and jagged horns. But it was their wings, black as night and filling the sky with the sound of thunder, that made Asper gape.
Scraws.
So that’s what they looked like up close.
The Sainites on the rooftop scrambled into saddles behind the pilots seated on the avian creatures’ necks. As soon as they were settled, the snap of reins sent the beasts aloft, flying into the sky and wheeling in a great circle around the Karnerian formation.
“Rain steel, boys!” Blacksbarrow called from the back of the lead beast, a magnificent creature whose ebon feathers were crowned with gold.
Asper had only a moment to admire the scraw before her head was forced down. Crossbows hummed in off-key melodies, sending bolts flying down to meet the Karnerian shields.
While some found cracks in the defense or soft patches of metal to punch through, most found only unyielding iron as the formation marched to match the scraws flying circles around them, turning like a spoke of a great wheel, shields always held before them. Those who fell from stray bolts were offered the elegy of a command from Careus, another man stepping up to take his brother’s position.
The whole thing was really quite orderly, Asper noted. Truly humans had come far enough that their killing each other could be as efficient as possible. And she would have taken the time to appreciate it more if she hadn’t glanced up at the alley mouth and seen Dransun still there, watching helplessly.
Her status as a priestess and a foreigner might afford her protection from Careus and Blacksbarrow—at least in theory�
�but the common people of Cier’Djaal, “protected” though they also were, could ill afford for her to be here when the smoke cleared and questions were levied.
“Careus!” Asper cried to be heard over the shrieking of scraws and the stomping of boots. “You need to let me out! I can’t stay here and—”
The tinny shriek of a bugle sang a terrible war song that was echoed in a quintet of avian screams, far closer, far angrier than the ones circling them. Against that sound the soldiers’ cries of alarm almost seemed an insignificant thing.
“Jousters! Right behind us!”
Almost.
Helmets craned up and over armored shoulders to look at the rooftops behind them, just in time to see the shadows of dark wings and the glitter of armored barding as more scraws came sweeping over. These bore but single riders, armored just as their steeds were, each one bearing a barbed lance set against the saddle. Plumed helmets flapped wildly in the wind as they swept down from the rooftops in a wedge formation and landed upon the cobblestones. They lost not a bit of momentum as hooves and claws thundered across the stone and bore them down upon the exposed rear of the phalanx.
“Blacksbarrow, you clever shrew,” Careus snarled. “Reverse formation! REVERSE!”
In an instant the great weakness of the Karnerian phalanx became known. Even the most well-oiled machine has to come to a dead halt before it can change direction. Soldiers scrambled to bring their spears about to meet the charge, but their timing was too slow and their weapons were too short.
This didn’t become completely clear until the bodies started flying.
The shrieks of the scraws carried even over the screams of the soldiers as the beasts tore into their ranks. Their wings were folded, their heads were lowered, and their eyes remained unblinking even as they crushed Karnerians under hoof and rent them under claw, the jousters’ lances ripping through shield and spear alike.
Asper tried to ignore the screams. She tried to ignore the blood in her eyes as she struggled to crawl out from under the chaos. She tried to ignore how her heart stopped beating for a moment as she felt a scraw’s beak reach down and narrowly snap shut just short of her neck as it rushed over her.
