Scribes

by James Wolanyk

  “Not here.”

  “Eh?”

  “You said he’d be spared,” Anna said. “We need to take him to Lojka, at the very least.”

  “We’re headed north. Lojka’s not on the way.” He sighed. “Don’t pretend I’ve slighted you. The terms were clear, girl.”

  Anna stared at the tracker’s still bloody burlap through the press of fresh tears, wondering if she could break the rune with enough force. She knew her own skill, but there had to be some escape from the bargain, some recourse against such a monster. Deeper yet, she hoped there was a loophole in her own guilt. The exact wording of their deal seemed so distant, so muddled by dread that Anna no longer remembered if she’d damned the boy.

  The tracker beckoned her with a gloved finger. “Come along, then.”

  Julek had remained silent while in the soglav’s grasp, but it was far from stoicism. He often shut down under duress. Most of his fearful moments—the autumn thunderstorms, or the midnight visits from drunken watchmen—were eased with Anna’s company. When he hid under the bed, Anna would lure him out and hug him until he stopped shaking, and his voice would return.

  But in that moment, it took all of Anna’s strength to simply look him in the eye.

  She’d sold him out, just like mother and father had.

  Anna tore her gaze from the boy and set it on the tracker and his Hazani crossbow. She lunged forward. In a flash, she hooked her blade upward, straining to clear the hauberk’s metal rings and pierce the burlap mask.

  The tracker’s attention was elsewhere, and he failed to raise his crossbow as Anna’s blade bit into the burlap and glanced off bone, sawing through the soft flesh beneath his chin. He staggered back one step before halting.

  It wasn’t enough.

  Anna forced the blade deeper until her hands pressed against moist burlap. She clutched the knife with pearl-white knuckles, her grip trembling, teeth gritted in exertion. No matter how hard she pushed, the blade had done its best, and could go no further.

  Her rune held, slowly forcing the blade out of the tracker’s flesh. Sinew snapped and rewound itself around the depths of the incision. Blood rushed back with a wet slurp, soon followed by the skin’s closure, sounding all too similar to skinning fowl.

  At each stage of reconstruction, Anna’s hand moved farther from the gash in the burlap. Soon the blade’s tip emerged from the burlap, hovering impotently over the evidence of her failure.

  “Most would have tried that sooner,” the tracker said. He used the crossbow’s front edge to gently guide Anna back, and she complied in stunned silence. “You traded surprise for this?”

  Anna couldn’t breathe. The attack felt like déjà vu, a dream she’d often imagined but never experienced. Her hand, still holding out the blade for a second strike, shook as it dripped with fresh blood. There was no return. She knew what would happen next, but again it was all too dreamlike.

  “I wish you hadn’t done that,” the tracker said.

  He jerked on his beast’s tether.

  Before Anna could cry out the animal overshadowed Julek. The boy tensed, followed by a sickening pop. His hand jerked out of the soglav’s hold for a moment, pale and thin and writhing, then dangled like a hangman’s noose. There was no scream, no farewell, no immediate sense of death. Even the ravens sat expectantly on their branches, staring back at Anna.

  “Let him go.” She was too steeped in disbelief to care how childish it sounded. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t look away from Julek’s limp body, or the way the soglav slashed at it and rammed its muzzle against the bloody flesh. She tried to say more, but her words came as broken, rambling whimpers.

  “I’ll take the muzzle off,” the tracker said. His crossbow nestled under his arm, he untied the tether at his belt, wandered up behind the soglav, and slid the twine loops over the creature’s stumped horns. He stepped calmly back as the muzzle fell free, and the soglav tore into its kill. “He’ll be busy for ten minutes or so. And he won’t need to feed again, I think.”

  A single thought circled in Anna’s mind. I’m so sorry.

  The tears came quickly. She knew she should’ve looked away, or used the dagger she now held like a useless block of iron, but it was pointless. There was no sense in being brave now, or maintaining any illusions. Julek’s body was still warm, but the sigils beneath his skin were gone, snuffed out when he was. Somehow, she felt she’d only known her brother through those markings. She’d known his essence in a way nobody else ever could.

  The sigils were gone now, and they were a thousand leagues apart.

  I’m sorry.

  “North, right?” the tracker sighed. He shifted his grip to use both hands on the crossbow. “I think we decided on north.”

  Anna wanted to scream, but couldn’t manage. “You—”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “You killed him!”

  The ravens fled into the canopy, squawking.

  “What of it?” the tracker asked. “You broke the agreement.”

  The truth bit deepest. Alternatives played out in her mind—allowing the tracker to take her, leaving Julek to grow up and prosper on his own in Lojka—only for them to dissolve with her next scream. She buried her face in her hands.

  “Chin up, girl,” the tracker said. “In time, you’ll be glad I did it. You’ll see.”

  When Anna glanced through her fingers she saw the soglav continuing its grim work, raking its teeth across pale flesh and turning her brother’s limbs into ragged strips of meat. Even then, she looked on. She needed to remember this.

  “We haven’t the time,” he added. “Some respectable food will put the fire back in your eyes, I’m sure.”

  Branches cracked in the distance as the other trackers closed in. The skies were lightening, no longer dark enough to hide the grisly scene. Within moments company would arrive.

  “You’re too pretty to be found by them,” the tracker said. He gestured to the northeast, where the clouds were a burning orange. “If you don’t start walking, I’ll have to carry you. I’m sure neither of us would like that.”

  She thought about running. If she was swift, she might even make it to the lake before they could catch her. But there was nothing to be found there. There’d once been a shadow of hope at the sandy shores, but it died with Julek. So Anna glared at the tracker, and stumbled toward him, dagger at her side. That night she would slit his throat.

  Until then, she was his accomplice. And she hated herself. She hated that she stared at raw, bloody flesh.

  “That’s it,” the tracker soothed her, paying no mind to the blade in her hands. “You and I are going to be very good associates, Anna.” He lifted his head at the approach of the other trackers, still too far to identify them. “There’s much to be gained in an honest partnership.”

  Chapter 2

  By the time Anna spoke again, it was dusk. She didn’t know how far they’d walked that day, or where they were, because every stretch of underbrush looked identical to her, and her eyes never found the courage to wander up or look back at the tracker. More to the point, she had no interest. There was thoughtless comfort in walking, and when she heard the tracker’s steps slow to a crawl—a measured six paces behind her, as it had been since morning—she increased her pace.

  “Slow down,” the tracker said.

  That was when she spoke. “No.” Her throat was raw and cracked, but she couldn’t bring herself to beg for water or take another rest. That would give her time to think.

  “Have you ever seen a wolf’s teeth up close? Nasty bites,” he called out. “Some of them are starved in these parts.”

  Anna kept walking.

  The tracker heaved a drawn-out sigh. “Do I need to threaten you with a bolt?”

  She imagined the crossbow’s thick rope clapping, the iron bolt tearing into her spine. She saw herself d
ying beneath the oaks. It was a more dignified death than Julek had been given, and less painful. Maybe she deserved it. If she just kept walking—

  Wood creaked as the tracker wrenched back on the crossbow’s arm, and once again, it halted Anna mid-step.

  “That’s it,” the tracker said. “See? A bit of cooperation is healthy.”

  She turned, raising her head for the first time in hours. The tracker was a glob of shadow in the twilight, but beyond him, the skies were crimson. Soon enough the forest would become pitch-black. Finding her own way would be impossible. Back home, she knew the roads and trails three leagues in any direction.

  Even if she could find her way back, she wouldn’t go.

  They sold him out, she told herself. They sold us both out.

  Now the necklace felt tainted against her skin. She wanted to throw it deep into the woods, or bury it, or melt it. But it was more than jewelry now. Her parents would’ve recouped the cost of the gift with the salt they received for Julek’s sale. No, it was far more than two palms of cast silver. It was the suffering of a frail boy.

  “Did you see it yet?” asked the tracker. He fidgeted as he released the crossbow’s tension and approached her, his silhouette swelling. “Look behind you.”

  Slowly, Anna glanced over her shoulder.

  Something massive stood among the thinning trees. Wide and towering, jagged along its upper crest, immersed in shadow aside from the odd spot of sunset. Among the illuminated areas were weathered stones and scorch marks.

  “What is it?” asked Anna, worried that the beast might awaken while she stared.

  “Many things.” The tracker stepped closer, crunching twigs beneath his boots. “But for tonight, it’s a landmark, and a place to bed down.”

  A place to slit his throat. Anna looked at the tracker’s darkened burlap mask, so exposed after he’d abandoned his helmet and neck guard. “A landmark to what?”

  “Our destination.”

  She scowled. “Where is it?”

  “You’ll know when we arrive, won’t you?” He stepped past her, carrying the odor of distilled sweat. “Come now. I’m a swift eater. You’ll want a cut of the rations, I imagine.”

  Against her wishes, Anna’s stomach growled. She followed the tracker into the ruins, confining her thoughts to the safe and reliable need for food.

  The main courtyard was too shadowed to make out anything in detail, but it was as large as she’d imagined. In many ways, it was surreal. It was another place from her nightmares, in which she was so small she might be lost and never found again. She waited in the center of the expanse, her gaze following the tracker’s movements with mindless interest.

  He moved from doorway to doorway, altogether too confident in this new place. People had once lived here, and yet he moved through their property as though he owned it.

  Eventually he emerged from a squat doorway. “Come along, girl.”

  * * * *

  By the time it was full dark, Anna still hadn’t finished her rations. The tracker had given her a crumbling portion of his hardtack disc, made from milled barley and rye, but the dryness of the hardtack had nothing to do with Anna’s sluggish appetite. She’d always considered eating a waste of her time, having never considered it a priority when more pressing matters were at hand. That’s why you’re bone-thin, father had often told her. That’s why you haven’t bled yet, mother had said. But none of it mattered now. Surely her descent into cowardice would have stunned anybody back home, but it surprised her the most.

  She rolled bits of the hardtack between her fingers until they crumbled, watching them slip through her fingers in the candlelight. It was the height of the summer, and the woods were still cool and fresh in the darkness, so the tracker hadn’t bothered to build a fire. Back home—

  Anna stopped herself.

  You don’t have a home. You had a home.

  Across the chamber, resting against an empty stone archway that led into the courtyard, the tracker shifted on his seat of packed earth. He’d given up the chamber’s only chair to Anna. In the candlelight his eyes twinkled with a bit more life, but the illusion was shattered by his burlap mask. “Generally we eat food, not plant it.” He grinned. “And we drink water when it’s offered to us. Or liquor, if it suits you better.”

  Anna glanced up from her work. The ceilings were low and close, and the chamber echoed with wind and its long-dead voices. At the floor near Anna’s feet the tallow candle burned in an uneven, smoky cadence, its fumes pricking at her eyes. Their light washed over her ruined boots, which she’d set aside to dry, and so that she may give her blisters and open sores some reprieve.

  “An old woman once told me to give my wife daughters, and daughters only,” the tracker said. “She said I would never be in want of a story, or song. She said that daughters—women, you see—have the mind to remember songs.”

  For a moment the lure tugged at Anna. She opened her lips, ready to abandon her silence to ask why the tracker’s wife couldn’t sing for him, but thought better of it.

  He noticed. “Do you know any songs, girl?”

  “No.”

  “You had so much more to say earlier.” The tracker reached for the heap of linked mail beside him. He shook the folds to flatten them out, candlelight shimmering over its rings. “You can use it as a headrest, if you like. Better than nothing.”

  Without the mail, he wore only a brown, sweat-stained tunic. As good as naked, for the purposes of murder. But there was no telling how long his rune would last. She’d carved it well, but most runes from Lojka’s scribes never lasted more than six hours. Even if she’d never counted the exact duration of her own runes, she had no illusions about her talent: The tracker had to be vulnerable by midnight.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked.

  Anna tore her attention from the hardtack. “I want to know where we’re going.”

  “North isn’t enough?”

  In truth, Anna didn’t know what she expected in his answer. Even if he told her their destination, and the roads and ferries and landmarks they’d encounter along the way, it meant nothing. Lojka was the closest town to Bylka, after all, and she’d never seen it with her own eyes. The larger cities were myths, for all she knew.

  North was a vague direction, but it held all of her fear and ignorance about the world.

  The tracker turned to the blackness outside. “I can guarantee that you haven’t seen a keep this large in all your days.” A longing drawl haunted his words. “Can you imagine how many people used to sleep here, work here, fuck here?”

  “Stop,” Anna said curtly. She dropped the remnants of the hardtack and glared at the tracker, searching for the lustful glimmer men held in their eyes. The same spark her father had beaten out of passing riders. But in the tracker’s gaze she saw only the cloudy violet of dusk petals.

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” the tracker said.

  Anna’s eyes never left the tracker. She waited, ready to draw the blade and carve his flesh. She wouldn’t be able to kill him, of course, but she could at least put up a fight.

  Or if all else failed, she could always cut her wrists to the bone.

  That was what brave girls did, according to the songs. There was no place in the Grove-Beyond-Worlds for the girls who died as rozbitsa konar—broken branches.

  “Have I stolen your hunger?” the tracker asked.

  She grappled for a reply, hardly able to resist crying or grabbing for her weapon. He’d taken much more than her hunger. He’d taken a sweet boy, and a—

  “Six hundred bodies used to live here,” the tracker said, oblivious to her mind. “Not all within the walls, you understand. If you walk around the southern wall, you’ll see where they put up the shacks and kitchens. That’s where the tanners and bankers lived. There were kennels for hounds, and pens for sows, just down by the pond.�
�� He closed his eyes, and the burlap sack shifted with heavy exhales. “Alive. This place was alive, girl.”

  Anna took in a fresh view of the chamber, but was too tired to visualize any of it. Too numb to care for ruins or their glory days. Yet Julek had always told her stories of a keep in the bogs, a place they’d explore together someday.

  “There’s nothing to fight here,” she said.

  “There’s a host of things to fight, girl. Soglavs, flesh peddlers, Laughing Men, azibahli from the north. . . .”

  She tried to imagine the azibahli—massive, thinking spiders dwelling in caves and cities of webs, the focus of tales from mercenaries and caravan drivers alike. They were only myth, surely, but the thought chilled her.

  “Even if it’s quiet,” the tracker said, “a keep isn’t always for fighting. Sometimes it shows that you have something.”

  “Like salt.”

  “Like salt, yes,” the tracker said, somewhat amused. “But stature is far rarer. Stature, and the sweat of a hundred men who would break their backs to see your banner raised. That’s something you’d never see in Bylka. What stature does a glorified riding post have?”

  Yesterday Anna might’ve snapped back at that. She might’ve thrown a punch, if he were one of the mouthy boys from the east side of the river. Her grandfather had practically built the town from his own pockets. But today it wasn’t her home. It was another town she’d heard about from wanderers. “It probably has more stature than ruins.”

  “Perhaps,” the tracker growled. “This was a Bala keep. Most of the landowners had foresight, you see. The moment they saw a Mosko standard in the wind, or a pack of riders, they opened their gates and hid their daughters.”

  “Maybe they should have surrendered,” Anna said.

  “Oh, they did. It’s a fool’s business to tear apart something you’ve been given.” He inspected the vaulted ceiling, now crumbling and choked with gossamer threads, and shook his head. “The Moskos were always dense.”