He raised his head just as the first ash warrior reached him, drew back his right hand, and punched it into the creature’s face.
The ash warrior’s head exploded in a shower of grey, the rest of its body collapsing a moment later.
Two more of the dead men reached him, one after the other, both dispatched in a similar manner. Reuben was doing more than just mindlessly punching the creatures. Despite their inability to speak, the ash warriors had some level of intelligence, and were not lining themselves up to be beaten down by him. However, Reuben’s feet and body were at work, manoeuvring him into position so he could replicate his first effective attack.
His mind was moving quicker than he could ever remember, working automatically. His fists felt indestructible, as if their forward motion was destined to be ended only by the breaking of his enemies.
Fighting these ash warriors was the most natural thing in the world, and his enjoyment of this basic Knack brought him shame. At the corner of his eye, Reuben was aware of the spectre of Restless Hawk, silently laughing at him, the former legend now a regular pugilist. His face burned, and he snarled in anger.
He moved forward aggressively now, attracting more attention from the Shepherdess’ army, but he welcomed their advances. Snarling, Reuben grabbed at them, pulling arms from their bodies, hurling them back into each other, breaking more heads. He was a storm, pushing back against the black cloud that threatened the village, that had taken the child’s life, that had unveiled his forgotten shame. Without contemplating it, his snarl turned into a roar. The dead faces of the ash warriors blended into one, his arms filled with a welcome ache from the repeated exertion they were not used to.
A dark shape overhead distracted Reuben. A figure fell from the roof above him, bouncing into the grey crowd ahead. It was then, through the haze of rage that he was now swimming in, Reuben was vaguely aware he had made his way to the church door, beating a path through the milling ash creatures.
Shouting incoherently with each blow, Reuben pushed his way through the warriors that blocked his advance, his leather duelling gloves now splitting at the knuckles. Each contact with an ash warrior’s skin was accompanied by a blaze of pain from his hand, but Reuben ignored it.
Curse these hands. These simple, stupid hands.
Reuben stumbled when he put his fist through a warrior’s head, and was greeted with the sight of Starving Pup standing facing him, the Shaven on the ground beside the boy, curled up in a ball in the dirt, her hand clutching her face, grey crumbling from behind her fingers.
Starving Pup shouted something at Reuben, but the older Bravador could not make out the boy’s words beyond the roaring of his own voice inside his head. There were too many enemies about them now, and the sensation of his Knack reawakening was too raw for Reuben to cope with. Instead, he stood back to back with the boy, using his fists to keep the monsters at bay, Starving Pup cutting at them with his rapier.
The mocking faces on the edges of his vision had moved, and Reuben found them now on the enemies that assailed him. Reuben was vaguely aware that there was no way the Bravadori of Espadapan could be the ashen faces before him, but all Reuben could see were the jeering faces of Galloping Turtle, Battered Bear, Sinister Crow, Preening Owl, and many others, all laughing at him and his unskilled Knack, his talent of little renown. He ended their existence, exploding them into clouds of dust, but still they kept coming, laughing at him. Towards the end, an ash warrior with the face of Restless Hawk herself stepped forward. She did not seem surprised as Reuben snarled, and drew back his hand to lash out at her. Her mocking smile disappeared as her head exploded when he punched it, but removing that smile did nothing to dispel Reuben’s anger.
Then, through the haze of breaking faces, Reuben spotted something real. Advancing through the horde around him, Reuben could see a face he recognised, one that summoned fear from deep inside him. A phantom from his recent memory, a white hand-print where skin had been ruined. It was Procopio, the man who had beaten him, who had ended the legend of Crazy Raccoon. The bandit was dead, and was pushing his way towards Reuben. Like all the other Bravadori attacking Reuben, Procopio was grinning.
Reuben began to shake, and stepped back from the monster, pushing up against Starving Pup.
Starving Pup turned to look at the advancing Procopio.
“Okay, Yizel, we need you now,” the boy said to the Shaven, still curled up at her feet, moaning lowly. “Procopio is here, and you’re the only one of us good enough to stop him.”
Reuben looked on in grudging admiration as the Shaven, Yizel, picked herself up upon hearing Starving Pup’s words. As she lowered her hand, ash fell from her face, leaving an ugly dead mark along its right hand side.
However, the Shaven’s sword was in her hand, and her face was set.
Reuben would recognise her expression anywhere. It was the emotion he himself had felt so recently.
The Shaven was angry, and hungry to prove herself.
Her face burned where the creatures had touched her, but inside she was steady. Close by, Crazy Raccoon, returned to them, was bellowing with rage, a mindless creature beating away at the ash warriors that threatened to overwhelm them. With Crazy Raccoon and Starving Pup dealing with the warriors, a gap opened to allow Yizel to deal with her new foe - the shade that had once been Procopio.
The dead man stood four paces away from her, blade ready, his face fixed in a rictus grin. Starving Pup had mentioned that he could predict an enemy’s movements before they were made. Yizel had none of these skills, but her Knack was the better one in this situation.
She was fast.
Procopio stood straight-backed, the tip of his rapier pointing at Yizel’s face. He gave a small step with his front leg, moving only his wrist to swipe his blade against Yizel’s own, testing her resolve. She gave a small push back, and in response Procopio lunged forward, front leg bent deep, his blade tip rising from below her defences, heading for her throat. Some of the bandits Yizel had faced back at their estate had been Knacked, but none had a gift as strong as their leader, even in this new state. Despite the echo of his Knack, Yizel found that she was faster, stronger, and stepped around his lunge, kicking Procopio back. The ashen man did not relent, and continued to move forward, thrusting after each of Yizel’s parries, forcing her backwards, close to the searching fingers of the ash warriors that surrounded the duellists.
“Push!” Starving Pup shouted, presumably to Crazy Raccoon, straining to make his voice heard over the sounds of battle and the Shepherdess’ echoing sobs. “Make room for her.”
The boy’s command must have worked, despite no reply from Crazy Raccoon. Yizel did not dare take her gaze from Procopio, but as she stepped backwards from his attacks, she found her companions had already cleared the ash creatures away, giving her room to fight.
As they moved back from the church doors, Yizel began to spot a rhythm in Procopio’s movements. She narrowed her eyes, hoping he would not choose now to try something new. She angled her body slightly to the right, presenting Procopio with a better target on that side. As predicted, his thrust came in low, faster than anyone should have been able to keep up with.
But Yizel’s dagger was already in her offhand, halfway through its slash before Procopio’s blade arm was where she needed it to be. The ash man’s hand came off at the wrist, disappearing into dust, dropping his rapier impotently to the ground. Yizel did not stop, swinging wide with her longer blade at Procopio’s neck, carving through it with little resistance.
The dead man grinned at her for a split second, before breaking apart before her.
“Plough my mother, but you’re fast,” Crazy Raccoon said.
Procopio gone, Yizel finally allowed herself time to take a glance to her side. There, the legendary Bravador - maskless again - continued to fight the grey creatures, his gloved fists covered in ash. Whether that ash was the remains of his foes, or if his knuckles - like Yizel’s face - had been turned, she could not tell.
It was at that moment the Shepherdess’ black cloud finished its journey across the Wildlands, breaking over Calvario with the weight of a tombstone falling flat onto a freshly dug grave.
The impact of its arrival was a physical one, smashing into Yizel, Starving Pup and Crazy Raccoon, throwing them across the dirt of the street they fought in, bowling them into a heap against the church’s wall. None of the ash warriors survived the impact. As one, they exploded at the force of their mistress’ arrival, the ash that they had once been composed of filling the air of the village, choking the few living people still able to breath it, swirling in an unseen breeze, then flowing back into the black cloud that marched through the village. The cloud of blackness condensed, reducing in size but its darkness becoming more potent. When the first sob ripped out of it, the air of the village seemed to hum, throbbing in response to a pain that had been nurtured for generations.
The Black Shepherdess had arrived. She stood there, at the church’s open doorway, sobbing as her dead army returned to her, her black cloak billowing in a phantom breeze.
It hurt Arturo to look at the Shepherdess. Yizel’s fight with Procopio had taken the three of them away from the church doorway, where the Shepherdess now stood, twice as tall as any human, the last remains of her ash warriors still flowing through the air, returning to her. Her wails came more frequently now, but were no longer forlorn, instead laced with an underlying menace. He could not capture her form perfectly in his mind, as if he was seeing double when he tried to focus on her. Her presence and her continuing crying made the air around him feel more solid, reminding Arturo of the consistency of the broth his mother used to make for him on winter nights. At the thought of his mother, the air before him almost rippled at the sound of the Shepherdess’ cries, and Arturo’s mother was standing there, beside the Shepherdess, staring into the church along with the demonic figure. Arturo’s eyes widened, and he felt that his head would crack, a splitting pain lancing into his brain. He looked at Yizel and Crazy Raccoon, both still lying on the ground, rigid with fear. They did not seem to notice the small woman standing beside the Shepherdess. Arturo looked back at the Shepherdess, and his mother was gone.
I’m going mad, then. Like poor Tomas, only a few days behind him.
A pain lanced through his head again, and this time Arturo felt his Knack flare into life. It showed him what was about to happen, the Shepherdess ripping a hole in the wall of the church, enlarging the doorway so she could fit through it. It also showed him Tomas, pulled from Arturo’s own thoughts, standing in the place his mother had briefly occupied. Tomas was looking right at Arturo, smiling his gap-toothed smile.
Arturo shook his head, and Tomas vanished. As his Knack had predicted, the edges of the Shepherdess’ cloak reached up to grab the sides of the open doorway, and plucked the surrounding stonework from the wall of the building, throwing it behind her in afterthought.
She cried again, and again he felt the air almost ripple. This time, images of his father and brother haunted the edges of his vision.
She’s doing this to me, just by being here. Affecting my Knack, somehow. Pulling these images from my head.
Paying no attention to the three swordfighters lying in the dirt nearby, the Shepherdess entered the church.
Arturo hesitated only for a moment. She had never even looked at them, leaving them outside, alone. If they wanted, right now they could be free, they could run back to the City of Swords to tell tales of their survival against this agent of the Mistress of the Wilds.
Together, the three of them ran towards the church entrance.
“What does she want in there?” Crazy Raccoon barked. Arturo glanced at the man’s hands as they ran. The thick leather of his duelling gloves was cracked, grey and flaking, and the knuckles of both gloves had worn away, showing similarly grey skin underneath.
“Doesn’t matter,” Yizel replied. “The villagers are in there too. We can’t leave them to her.” The entire right side of Yizel’s face had been drained and broken by the touch of the ash warriors. Arturo suspected it would never recover, even if they survived today.
Through the gaping wound in the wall of the church, they could see the Shepherdess standing in front of three young men, all with machetes pointed at her. Arturo could spot a body slumped against the right hand wall, a trail of blood running down the stones above it, its chest weeping red. Beside the dead man, another cowered, crying, looking in terror at the creature from the Wilds.
The Shepherdess’ cloak continued to float, but some of the points of the cloak had somehow hardened into sharp points, four of them. Two of these points lanced at the villagers in front of the Shepherdess. One, miraculously, was batted aside by the villager that was being attacked, but the other found its mark. The man screamed as he died, and the cloak gave a flick, picking the body up and hurling it against the wall, where it slumped down beside the first body, leaving another line of red in its wake.
The Shepherdess, her back to the Bravadori and the Shaven, continued to sob, but this time a voice could be heard through the tears. It reminded Arturo of all the times in his life when he had felt true terror - when he had faced and fought those two bandits back at Janitzio, the Cadejo in the dark of the Wilds, the nail against his palm at Procopio’s estate. “Where is she?” the Shepherdess hummed, her voice shaking the walls of the building, addressing nobody in particular. “Where is my Mistress? I can feel her presence.” The venom in the creature’s voice made the Shepherdess’ animosity towards the Mistress of the Wilds clear.
Arturo’s heart sank. He turned to his companions. “The villagers have a shrine to the Mistress of the Wilds - the Shepherdess must be here for it.”
“Why does she want it?” Yizel asked. “She’s the Mistress’ creature. They should be happy the village are secretly worshipping her.”
“Who cares,” Crazy Raccoon said, smiling for the first time since Arturo had seen him unmasked at Procopio’s estate. “If that’s all she wants, give her the half-masked shrine and we can clear off.”
Arturo shook his head. “No,” he said, “that’s the problem. The shrine is hidden in the church cellar.”
“That’s where the villagers are hiding,” Yizel said, piecing the disaster together. “She’ll tear them all apart before she reaches that shrine.”
The three of them turned their heads to see the Shepherdess walk up to the statue of Queen Isabella that overlooked the church altar, looking the stone face in the eyes briefly, and then pulling it down with her cloak blades.
“Ah,” Crazy Raccoon said. “Can’t imagine she’s the sort to stand around while we fetch it for her.”
“We’ll lose everyone,” Arturo said, frustrated. He could see the remaining young village men creeping around the church walls, their weapons dropped, terror on their faces.
Of course they should run, he thought, realising the men were trying to get to the exit. Nobody has ever been able to stand against her. Not even the Bravadori in the legends.
But they would try. They don’t exist - maybe they had never existed, Silent Sparrow, Roaming Iguana - but if they were here now, facing this creature, knowing that she was about to take countless innocent lives like a scythe through stalks of corn… Well, the true Bravadori would fucking well try to save their lives.
Arturo bent down, picked up part of the brickwork that had once held the door to the wall, and threw it at the back of the Shepherdess’ head. Crazy Raccoon and Yizel saw him doing it, had plenty of time to stop him if they had wished to do so. They did not.
Upon impact, the Shepherdess’ sobs paused briefly. She cocked her head, then turned on the spot to face them. It was the first time Arturo had had the chance to properly see her face. Like the stories said, it was not quite there, like a badly moulded clay doll, a rough bump where her nose should be, shallow black pits for eyes, a rigid, white skull grin, li
ke the one Procopio had worn.
Those details gave Arturo hope. If the stories got those correct, then someone had faced her before and survived to tell others what her face looked like.
The Shepherdess raised her black blades, and advanced. Arturo focussed his Knack, for the second time today feeling amber sparks jumping from his eyes as he studied how the creature held her weapons.
“Anything?” Yizel asked him. She must have realised what Arturo was doing. “Any patterns in her movement? Can you give us anything to work with?”
Head splitting, Arturo bit his lip, holding his ground as the sobbing demon advanced. With each sob from the Shepherdess, Arturo’s reality rippled. He saw Red Curtain advancing alongside her, the other Paws that had helped to beat Arturo walking closely behind. Another sob, and those figures disappeared, replaced by Preening Owl and the mob of Whispering Mice that had jeered the name Starving Pup after him as he had fled from them.
Each sob was like a hammer to Arturo’s brain. As the visions of the Mice disappeared, he felt something inside burst, and blood began to trickle from both of his nostrils.
He shook his head. The Shepherdess was like nothing he had ever seen before. He was used to studying the form of swordfighters, and she was no swordfighter. This was more like watching a spider working her way down her web towards three fleas. Three idiotic fleas, too brave to run from her.
“I need to see her move,” Arturo said, struggling, eyes locked on the crying abomination. “Can’t tell what she will do if I don’t know how she moves. Both of you, take her on either side, but keep your distance - be ready to move back when she strikes. Don’t go for the kill, yet. Let me see what she does.”
Nodding at each other, Crazy Raccoon and Yizel advanced on either side of the Shepherdess. If he was not so focussed on reading his enemy, Arturo would have been amazed at how the two of them followed his instructions without debate. He would also have been amazed at how his two companions, who both clearly hated each other, worked well as a team. He was dimly aware of their Knacks reaching out for each other, entwining, ensuring that their positions on the battlefield supported each other, Crazy Raccoon just as strong as Yizel now he had abandoned his blade and chosen to fight with his fists. All the while, the Shepherdess continued to advance, her gaze locked on Arturo, the insect that had dared to throw a brick at her.
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