by J. V. Jones
“Easy now,” Ravis said, stroking her hair. “One small breath at a time.”
The urge to panic was great, but Ravis kept talking to her and touching her, and gradually she began to relax, allowing air to pass down to her lungs. Tessa was left feeling physically drained. She couldn’t stop trembling. The back of her nightgown was soaked in sweat, and she was aware of a salty, slightly chemical odor rising from her skin. She didn’t even smell like herself anymore.
“Sleep,” Ravis said. “You can’t expect to get over injuries like yours overnight. They are too serious. Sleep now. I’ll watch over you.”
“You’ve looked after someone like me before, haven’t you?” Tessa spoke mostly to test her breath and her voice. After a few seconds, when Ravis didn’t answer, she opened her eyes.
He was looking straight at her. His dark brown eyes had lost the one subtlety of shading that stopped them from being black. Something shone through them, but it wasn’t light, nor was it any kind of emotion Tessa could put a name to.
“I was married once,” he said after a moment. “My wife died of hura aya. Swamp sickness.” Seconds passed, and just when Tessa thought Ravis would say nothing more, he did. “Hura aya eats into the lungs first, and from there it travels outward to the kidneys, the liver, the brain. At first you think being unable to catch your breath is the worst part of it, and then you learn it isn’t.” Ravis ran his thumb knuckle over his scar. “Hura aya takes everything in the end: breath, sight, ability to move, urinate, think. Everything.”
Tessa glanced down. She couldn’t look into Ravis’ eyes. She now realized what shone through them, changing their color from brown to black: self-control.
Not knowing what to say to him, and suspecting anything she did say would be wrong, Tessa closed her eyes. She didn’t expect to sleep, but somehow she did, and when she opened her eyes again, Ravis was gone.
“Pass the word. Everyone in this village must leave their homes. Not later today, not this evening, but now. Take only what you can carry and flee to the west. Do not head to Bay’Zell looking for safety. Izgard will be there in less than a week. You must save yourselves and your children. Your village is directly in his path, and unless you act now you will all be dead by sunset. Now go.”
Camron forced his jaw together as he regarded the dozen men and women gathered before him. He knew his words were harsh, but he also knew harsh words were the only way to reach them. He had spent his childhood in a small, isolated community like this one. People grew up thinking no harm would ever befall them, that the world and its changes would pass them right by. They were wrong. Izgard was coming. He and his army were on the move, and less than five hours’ hard march separated them from the village of Shale.
“What about our grains?” said one man with yellow gray hair and patches of skin flaking from his sunburned nose. “Our summer stocks?”
“Leave everything you cannot carry. If Izgard burns the grain in your fields and the grapes on your vines, be glad you and your family weren’t there to be burned as well.”
A moment of shocked silence followed. A plump, well-dressed woman was first to break it. “But what about our animals? You can’t expect us to leave those too.” Her words met with grunts of approval from the others.
“No. Take only those animals you can safely load onto carts. Your herds must be turned loose.”
“Turned loose! Why, that’s madn—”
“Keep them in their pens and Izgard’s men will seize and slaughter them. Take them with you and they will slow you down to the point where you’ll be unable to outrun the Garizon forces. The only thing you can do is let them loose. Scatter them. Izgard’s men won’t have time to run down and catch individual animals. It’s summer, there’s plenty of grass in the valleys; the animals will be able to fend for themselves. When it’s safe you can return and round them up.”
The villagers didn’t like that at all. Their faces were drawn, their shoulders hunched. They shot each other nervous glances. The well-dressed woman clutched at the fabric of her blue linen dress. Camron wished he could deal with them more gently, yet he knew fear was the one thing that would make them leave their homes.
“When will it be safe to come back?” It was the old man with the yellow gray hair.
Camron shook his head. “I don’t know. Soon, I hope, but in truth it could be many weeks. Months, even.”
“But, our homes, our livelihood, our—”
“If you stay, you will die.” Camron’s voice was as cold and sharp as an ax breaking ice. “Your daughters will be raped, your sons will be mutilated, your homes will be set alight, and your animals will be taken. These are not empty words. I have seen what Izgard and his army is capable of. He tore the town of Thorn apart. No man, woman, or child was left standing. And right now he and his men are frustrated and angry. They won a battle, yet there were no spoils. They need food, drink, women, and supplies, and they won’t think twice about taking them.”
“But if we leave, Izgard can still burn our homes, torch our crops.”
A second man nodded in agreement. “We’ll have nothing to return to.”
Camron looked at the two old men who had spoken. He looked at all the villagers who had gathered in the plowed field to meet him. Morning sunlight shone in their faces, showing up wrinkles, broken veins, sunburned skin, and chapped lips. These people worked on the land, it was their life. He would not lie to them.
“Yes,” he said. “Izgard could order everything to be burned, I will not mislead you in this. It comes down to a choice between your homes and your lives. What do you value the most? Three nights ago I saw ten thousand corpses laid out in a valley west of Hook River. Chances are the bodies are still there. With limited manpower and even less time, the Sire has little choice but to let them rot.” Camron’s gaze traveled from face to face. “Would you want to meet the same fate as those men? Would you want your children to?”
One by one the villagers looked down, away from his gaze. Camron didn’t know what was showing in his eyes, but he was conscious of a catch in his voice. Three days’ hard riding, moving from village to village and, in some cases, farmhouse to farmhouse, had taken their strain. But what else could he do? What choice did he have? Izgard was only half a day behind him. The towns and villages that fell within his path to Bay’Zell had to be warned. Camron had seen his lifetime’s fill of dead bodies. He did not want to see any more.
The villagers shuffled their feet. Some shook their heads. More than one man glanced over his shoulder, in the direction Izgard’s army would approach from.
The well-dressed woman spoke first, releasing her grip on her dress and checking the faces of her companions before she began. “I am a grandmother. I have four grandchildren and another on the way. I love my land and I tend it well, but it’s been twenty years since I tended it with myself in mind. Every time I hitch my plow to my ox, I do it for my sons and daughters, that they might have something of value after I’m gone. Now, I’m no fool and I’m no spring lamb either, but I’d rather leave now and let Izgard run around after my chickens and pigs than risk having no one left to plow my fields for but myself.”
A moment passed. No one moved. The woman stood perfectly straight, chin high in the air. A breeze rippled through the group, raising collars and tugging at hair, and the moment it died away everyone spoke at once:
“Send for Wells. He’s got the fastest horse in the village. He can ride to the outlying farms and spread the word.”
“We must keep the children calm.”
“Let’s tell them we’re off on an outing.”
“No. We must tell them the truth.”
“Ethee, get Amis to pull out his four-wheeled cart.”
“Let’s all meet back here one hour from now.”
“Make it forty minutes instead.”
As he watched the villagers organize themselves, Camron took a long, deep breath. Checking that no one’s eyes were upon him, he moved closer to his horse and reste
d his weight against the creature’s flank. He was dead tired.
Each place he visited was different. Each group of people he spoke to reacted in a different way; some hurled insults at him, told him he was a liar, or a con artist, or a deluded fool. Others barely waited to hear the end of his story: they packed their belongings into a cart and left. In the three days he had been doing this, Camron had evacuated close to a dozen towns and villages, yet he still didn’t know what to expect. He only knew it had to be done.
The night following the battle had been a hard one. Camron had no memory of how he and Pax had managed to pull themselves away from the bodies. They retraced their steps up the slope and spent the next hour looking for Broc of Lomis. Finally they found him, lying in a rocky depression on the west side of the hill. He was as cold as the stone that lay beneath him. Part of his face had been torn away, and a deep gash had severed his windpipe. Blood from the wound had turned the undershirt Broc had worn to please his sister from bright yellow to black.
Camron picked up the body and carried it back to the retreat. Many times during the journey Pax asked if he could help bear the weight, but Camron refused. He had no memories, no family, no hometown. Broc’s body was all he had left.
As he laid Broc down close to the riverbank, the Sire sent for him. He wanted Camron to accompany him as he traveled first west, then north, and gathered a new army about him in preparation for a second battle in Bay’Zell. Camron refused. Sandor hadn’t liked that. He would have issued an order, only Camron didn’t give him the chance. Calling together the twenty or so men who were left in his troop, Camron rode from the retreat. Pax accompanied him. The young guard had seen the bodies in the valley; he had seen what was missing from Broc of Lomis’ face. He shared Camron’s need to get away.
Riding north from the camp in darkness, they had no purpose at first. Camron felt only loss. He had been too exhausted for anything else. Hours passed. The night passed. When dawn came the small troop happened upon a cleared road cut with freshly marked wheel furrows and followed it into a town.
His men were tired, dispirited to the point where they let their wounds bleed when heavy riding reopened them and fought viciously among themselves over the last drops of berriac. They needed food, rest, reason.
As they came to a halt by the town’s first inn, a young boy came out to water their horses. An even younger girl tagged along on his heels, mimicking his movements, and breaking out in high, excited giggles whenever he turned to shush her away. Judging from their coloring and dress, the boy and girl were brother and sister, busy doing whatever mischief brothers and sisters normally did. Camron found himself smiling. They were such happy, bright-looking children.
That was when it struck him. Izgard would be on his way. Here, to this sleepy little town of Merin. An army that size needed supplies, grain, alcohol, livestock. High on victory, they would be looking for victims to torture and taunt. And women. Izgard would have promised them women to lie with.
Camron turned cold. His horse, feeling a sudden change in his master, brayed nervously and flicked its mane. He patted the creature’s neck as he glanced around the town. But for the slanting copper awnings on the buildings and the partially paved roads, Merin might have been Thorn.
Camron looked back at the brother and sister. The boy had refilled his bucket at the well and was letting his younger sister help carry it back to the horses. They were laughing and pushing each other and losing great splashes of water to the dirt. Watching them, Camron felt a dull pain building behind his eyes. His vision blurred.
He had seen such terrible things in the past twenty-four hours, sights so appalling they had stripped all sense of normality from him, leaving him nothing inside but the kind of knee-jerk anger that wasn’t really an emotion at all. Now, to see something good, something simple and normal from everyday life, was like walking from a darkened room into daylight. It dazzled him. It made the ground shift beneath his feet one last time. This wasn’t only about soldiers anymore. This was about people and families as well.
Turning his horse, Camron gave orders to his men. The town had to be evacuated in less than an hour. Izgard’s army could reach here by noon. As he shouted the orders, Camron heard his voice grow stronger. He took deep breaths and, for the first time since the battle, focused his mind on what he could do, here, in the present, rather than all he could not make up for in the past.
They made mistakes that first time in Merin. They caused panic and anger and confusion. Twenty bloody and battle-weary troops riding into their midst, ordering them to leave their homes and abandon their possessions, had been met with open hostility by the townsfolk. It had taken a lot of time to persuade them to go. Some chose to stay behind, yet most decided to leave in the end. The gashes and claw marks on the troops’ thighs and chests persuaded better than words alone.
When Izgard and his forces rode up some four hours later, they found a ghost town.
Camron and his men had been moving steadily north ever since. Hugging the foothills, following the course of the Hook and then the Veize, sometimes half, sometimes a full day’s march ahead of Izgard, they had moved from town to town and village to village, warning everyone of the enemy’s approach. Fanning out, they had split up into groups to cover as many villages and outlying areas as possible. In four days’ time they would meet up in Bay’Zell.
Camron ran his hand over his horse’s flank, enjoying the warmth of flesh and blood. Most of the villagers of Shale had left the plowed field and only a few remained, discussing last minute changes to their evacuation plans. The woman in the blue dress was among them. Catching Camron’s eye, she mouthed the words “Thank you” and walked away.
Nodding an acknowledgment to the shadow cast by her back, Camron led his horse from the field. What he and his men were doing was so little, and unless Izgard’s army was somehow stopped at Bay’Zell, it was a temporary measure at best. Camron swung himself up in the saddle and headed due north. There had to be another way.
“Izgard has won the first battle. He slaughtered ten thousand Rhaize troops on ground to the west of Hook River.” Ravis paced the room. His leather tunic snapped as he moved. “He’ll be in Bay’Zell in under a week.” Water droplets glistened in Ravis’ hair and on his shoulders. His boots left wet imprints on the turquoise rug lying in front of the fire. He had just come in from the rain.
“We need to get back to Bay’Zell, don’t we?” Although Tessa had been awake for some time, she hadn’t been aware it was raining. She didn’t like being in a room with no windows. “We should leave tonight.”
Ravis shook his head. “No. We’ll stay until you’re stronger.”
“We can’t afford to.”
Something in Tessa’s voice caused Ravis to stop in mid-pace. “What do you mean?”
Tessa took a breath to steady herself before she spoke. “Just before I fell asleep the night of the fire, Avaccus said something to me. It was a warning.”
“What was it?”
“He said that in ten days’ time the Barbed Coil will have been upon the earth for five hundred years.”
Ravis’ tooth came down upon his scar. He closed his eyes for a long moment, then spoke, “This is what Izgard has planned for all along. He believes in all those old superstitions. He waited until the fifth day of the fifth month to make himself king. He even picked the year—crowning himself on the fiftieth anniversary of the last king’s death.” Ravis began to pace again. “Izgard will take Bay’Zell on the Barbed Coil’s five hundredth anniversary. That means we have only six days left.”
Tessa didn’t like to hear Ravis sounding so openly worried. “So you think there’s truth in what Avaccus said?”
“I think Izgard believes there is.”
Gritting her teeth together, Tessa swung her feet onto the floor. All sorts of pain fought her, but she fought them back, fists clenched. “Let’s get out of here.”
Ravis abandoned his pacing. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Tessa smiled. “You don’t know me very well, Ravis of Burano. If you did, you’d know that leaving is the one thing I do well. And you can either help or ignore me, but I warn you now, you won’t even come close to stopping me.”
Ravis’ mouth fell open. He looked at Tessa as if she were a bug he’d long dismissed as merely a crawler, only to find that if pressed in a certain spot, it stopped crawling and started flying instead.
Tessa’s smile widened. She had finally succeeded in surprising him. “I’ll use that new cloak of yours for now. We can buy more things when we get to Kilgrim. Have you got Moldercay’s address? We should pay him a visit before we leave.”
“You have to promise me to be careful.”
Tessa nodded. “I will.”
Ravis took her arm and helped her out of bed. The muscles in Tessa’s legs hurt as she shifted her weight onto them. Her eyes began to water. Ravis stood behind her, letting her use his weight to support herself. Feeling foolish for her show of bravado seconds earlier, Tessa waited for the weakness to pass.
It didn’t, not quite. But somehow she managed to get ready, brush her hair, splash water on her face, and pull the ties together on Ravis’ cloak. Ravis was beside her every minute, helping only if she needed it, allowing her time to do things for herself. Getting down the stairs was difficult. She had to take them one at a time. Her back ached a lot, but it was the shortness of breath that bothered her most. She hated being weak.
Moldercay’s address turned out to be on the same thoroughfare as the tavern, but on the far outskirts of town. Ravis led the horse while Tessa rode. A moderate rain set the street cobbles shining and made Ravis’ wool cloak stink.
The dull afternoon light did Bellhaven no favors. Three-story buildings blocked the streets; their gray stone facades bird stained and salt stained, their gutterless roofs spilling great jets of water onto the streets. Ditches were choked with empty beer casks and wine skins. The few people they passed held bulky objects under their cloaks and seemed to be in a hurry to get somewhere. Little business was being done. Most shopfronts were shut up, and the ones that were still open had a feeling of being closed. No candles had been lit to illuminate the wares.
