by Sandra Waugh
“Greed. Aggression.”
His words in turn were slapped, mouth tight—as if the Rider had painful history with such things. I started to ask, then remembered something Harker had said: This begins as a violence of Nature and becomes the violence of Man.
“It takes over?” I whispered.
“Like a virus. It finds your vulnerability and decimates.”
I must have moved or flinched, for Laurent suddenly touched my arm. “Chaos is the easy option,” he said more gently. “It is Balance that is the challenge. That makes us fragile. Remember that.”
I nodded. Fragile. I’d heard that too from Harker—he’d tried to frighten me with a fierce voice asking me where I was weak.
“So.” Laurent straightened. “Tyre is seeking.”
“Gren Fort?”
“A fool’s errand if they only send ten men,” Laurent said. “Besides, this road only tracks our route for a league or so. From here on, though, we will take caution.” He reshifted his sword to his left hip and started to push through the brush to where Arro waited.
I called after him, a sudden, ugly thought tightening my belly. “They—the guard—is it me they seek?”
Laurent paused, then shook his head. “There are things far better suited to tracking a Guardian.” But he added something, which didn’t sound quite like relief: “For now you are spared the Breeders’ focus.”
—
The Rider was right. I was not the focus. At the bend where the road curved west we found them: twenty-three men and boys armed with farm tools as rude defense, all tumbled like rag dolls facedown in the dirt.
Blood stained the road.
I WAS OFF the horse and running for the first body, the second. Laurent galloped to the other side, dismounting before Arro even halted. “Anyone?” he shouted.
I felt for pulses, looked at wounds, shaking my head no and no again. I found one old man, wheezing pink spittle, and propped his head in my lap, using the hem of my cloak to wipe the blood and grit from his face, smear it from his white hair.
His eyes flung open and he cried and lashed out, as if he were still trapped in battle. I cried out too. “It’s all right!” I tried to catch his focus. “You’re safe.”
“They’re taking us. We couldn’t stop them.” The man’s hands waved, reached out for me to pull him up.
I gripped his fingers and held them hard. I could feel life escaping him—sighing from his palms, his throat—beyond any ability to restore. “We can help,” I urged. “Tell me how to help!”
“Take me back. My village…We won’t be slaves….”
“Slaves?” The word soured my mouth. Those were the rumors of Tyre I’d not been able to believe.
“Take me back,” he begged. “I have to stop…”
The man was dying; it was cruel to force information. I spit out the disgust, then shifted and took his head gently between my hands, waiting while his skin warmed, Healer’s energy dispelling the fear. “You are safe,” I hushed. “Your village is safe.” I hoped it was true. “You will go home. You’ll see that all is well. All will be well.” I repeated that until his face softened, pain lulled by voice and touch. The heartbeat shuddered, slowed. Then it was done. I closed his eyes and shifted his head to rest on the ground, ill for it. Another and another and another…I couldn’t count how many dead I’d seen, soothed, could not help—
“Evie!”
I stumbled up and raced to Laurent. He cradled a boy, no more than nine year’d, with a vicious rip down his front from a falchion. “He breathes,” the Rider said.
Carrot hair, a fair sprinkling of freckles, and ginger eyelashes that shut on so bright a face. “The soldiers were coming for slaves,” I hissed, ripping open the blood-soaked shirt. “It cannot be—it cannot!” I threw all my anger toward Tyre. “Where is there a place where you are forced to do another’s bidding?”
“It’s for the mines.”
“What mines?” It was too quick, how the Rider answered. I wiped some of the blood away to see the wound, and for the first time my hands shook. The gash was long and deep, not unlike what had killed Raif. I swallowed, then set my jaw. This boy I would save.
“The gem mines of Tyre,” Laurent was saying. “It’s not territory they take, it’s people.”
“You cannot take people.” I tore up the boy’s shirt. “Stanch the blood,” I directed, pushing the pieces at the Rider. Then I ran to Arro, pulled my satchel and the flask of water from the saddle, and raced back. “Press harder! Stop his bleeding.”
I opened the flask, soaked a remaining bit of shirt, and used it to wipe around Laurent’s hands. Then I dug in my satchel for my little vials of herbs, forgetting I’d finished them all in my spell making and for the seer. The only thing was the empty jar of minion, which I threw away with a curse. Laurent looked up at me.
“Minion.” I was brusque. “Quickly! Does minion grow here?”
“I do not know, my lady.”
The Rider’s sudden formality warned me I was too late to help this boy. But I wanted none of it. I got to my feet again, ran to where the green met the road, then raced along the border. There was clover, and chamomile, and spurge—no minion. And why should there be? Minion was rare, not a roadside weed. Thwarted, I pulled some spurge as a poor substitute. I stuffed it in my mouth, chewing as I ran back, and spitting it into my palms.
I threw myself at Laurent’s side. Blood was soaking the cloth, his hands, everything. “You’re not pressing hard enough!” I cried.
“It cannot be stopped,” Laurent said quietly.
“That’s not true! He’s just a boy!” Of course the Rider was right, but I would yell anyway—at him, at anything to ease this anger that was eating at my chest, my heart. “We must save him!” I gritted, then corrected: “I must save him.”
Laurent did not respond, just drew his hands away and moved back. I smeared the wound with inadequate medicine. Blood ran into it so that the green became one mess of black, my hands black with it as well. I pushed hard on the wound, teeth clenched and silent, willing my hands to keep death at bay even as I felt the young life ebbing. And it was ebbing.
“No, NO!” On impulse I leaned over and placed a kiss on the freckled forehead—what was wrong with me that I was so despairing of a life? “Stay!” I shouted at him. I knew I was too upset for this; I brushed off my palms, pressed his wound again, asked softer, “Live.” But it was already too late. This boy, who most likely had run through a field that morning, drawn well water, and gathered an egg for breakfast, now lay red and still.
All of them did.
I stood up and stalked away, wiped my hands on the grass, then came back and started to drag a body to the side of the road. Wordlessly Laurent went to another and pulled him to the road’s edge. One by one we laid them there side by side, we as silent as the dead. It was not our place to bury or burn. We should leave these men, young and old, for their own families to collect. But when Laurent reached for the red-haired boy, I stopped him.
“He comes with us.” I was fierce. “We are bringing him back to his village.”
“If there is a village,” Laurent murmured. But he did not argue. He wrapped the boy in his own cloak and rested him gently over the saddle. Then he offered me his hand to help me mount, but I shook my head.
“I’ll walk.”
“We both will walk,” Laurent said. And it seemed a special respect that two led one home.
—
We stayed west on the road, following the sunset. I was miserable with questions, anger compounding. How could people kill other people or enslave them? Who would burn homes and livestock, ruin any bit of cultivated land? What inspired such senseless violence and disregard for life?
What Laurent’s thoughts were I couldn’t tell, but his jaw was set as hard as mine. We did not speak.
Smoke was in the distance—innocent at first, like the sweet smoke of kitchen fires. But there was too much of it and I’d seen too many burnings to be so fool
ed. “Their homes,” I bit out, lunging forward. “We have to help.”
Laurent gripped my shoulder, halting me midstride, and nodded at the field of corn that wound alongside the road. “Best we approach through there. We won’t be seen.”
I led, pushing into the stalks that rose high, then curled brown-dry, suffering like everything else. The smoke grew thicker, spiraling in the breeze, and I put my sleeve over my face at the stench, bitter at all of it. What matter that we were hidden when the dead leaves rasped, hardly disguising our approach? What matter that we approached at all? We were too late.
At the rim of the cornfield we stopped, faced a ruin where the village should have been. ’Twas empty of people, of animals—except for sheep carcasses strewn like puffs of fallen clouds. Eighteen cottages and three barns were in ashes, too fast, too complete for this to be from a normal burning, if there was such a thing. The nineteenth cottage, closest to the common well, stood untouched.
“They left it on purpose,” Laurent murmured.
“Then let us see why,” I said, and started off.
Again Laurent pulled me back. “Not so fast, my lady. That the soldiers left the cottage means they use it. They will be near.”
I returned hard, “So? The smoke will hide me. I am nearly the color of it.” And I was. My skin, hair, and frock were all rank gray.
We held gazes for a moment. My teeth were clenched, his mouth a hard line. Then Laurent’s frown softened. He began, “You hurt, I know—”
“Don’t.” I stopped him fiercely. “You were the one who said I only allow those who cannot be saved. So do not pity me.”
The Rider hesitated, then said simply, “Be on your guard, my lady. I will see to Arro and join you quickly.” He faded back and drew Arro deeper into the cornfield.
An acrid stink of charred wood and stone and straw. I picked my way over rubble—all steaming hot. The smoke was the same, but I’d never seen remains of a fire like this, what burned so totally, so quick. ’Twas nothing like the Troths’ wild and clumsy destruction. I scanned withered, ash-gone gardens, trying to see what herbs or flowers or even weeds I could use for medicine if needed. There was little left.
And then I peeked in the window of the standing cottage, saw a kitchen fire burning, a stew pot over it, and an old woman tending to it, impossibly ordinary in the midst of devastation. She was alone. I ducked and skirted around the side to the door, then whispered, “Mistress.”
The old woman straightened—as best a hunchback could. I must have looked like a ghost, for she clapped a hand over her face and nearly lost her balance on her crutch. “Law, lass! Who be ye?”
“Where are the soldiers?” I hissed.
“Near, must be—”
“Hurry, then.” I beckoned. “Come with me!”
She looked stunned. “With ye? To where? I canna travel.” She waggled her crutch.
“We have a horse.”
“Horse!” She hobbled closer to study me in the dying light, suspicious. “Who are ‘we’? Magicians?”
I shook my head and reached my hand to her, but she shook her head as well. “They be coming fer their meal. Get on with ye. Go—or hide. Quick! Afore yer seen.”
“Meal!” I stepped inside even as she waved me away. “You feed them?”
“Ye canna think I want to! I had no choice but prepare it! Where could I go?” The old woman’s face was grim. She gave up trying to shoo me off and turned away. “Curse of deformity. Else I’d be with the rest.”
“No curse, you’re lucky for it! We’ll take you to the next village.”
“Lucky?” She barked. “Yer not understanding! There’s no next village! Which ones they’ve not swallowed will fall tomorrow or the next. Lucky is to be bound, off to Tyre.”
I was stunned, and blunt for it. “How can you speak blithely of wanting slavery? Those men on the east road died to save you from—!”
“Dinna say that!” She interrupted, bitter as I and colder than stone. “I know my neighbors be dead! The stink of it was on their axes! Them metal men roped the rest like cattle, herded ’em off. And, aye, I’d rather be with my people than stand here servin’ tormentors our food!” She limped back to the pot.
I followed her. “We came to help.”
“Help!” It was sneered. She’d gone past the point of believing there was anything worth helping, or that she was worth helping—and hadn’t I thought the same? “Ye come from nowhere like some spook, whisperin’ Escape! Well, it’s too late fer that!”
I took a breath. I was sorry for being hard and we were foolish for arguing. “We brought one home to bury,” I told her.
She spit, “An’ who’s left to do the burying?”
I plowed through anyway. “A boy with the brightest red hair.”
Her crooked spine stiffened to retort, reject it all, but then she just sighed, sagging. “That be Ben. He shouldn’t have gone. But what do ye say to him: Be a slave? Nay. He wanted to fight with his da. I shouldna blame him fer that, though I’d not a done the same.” She shook a fist at the sky in breaking desperation. “They took my whole village! What use is an old body in a mine? Or a babe? But they took them all!”
The woman railed but she’d already given up, was waiting for the end. And it was an end; there was no one, nothing left. I looked at her shelves. Emptied but for some elderflower honey and rock salt. I looked at the pot; whatever she had left was in there. Food for the tormentors, she said. One final meal.
“Wait—they’ve not left.” Why had I not thought of it before? “They’re coming back for the stew!”
“Feed them, then be killed.” She swallowed. “I serve my use. Nothing left, ye see. If any village still stands, if anyone comes lookin’, it’ll be a sign to them—they be next. Maybe they’ll know, then, not to fight, an’ the soldiers might na burn it all.”
I hardly heard her. “ ’Tis almost dark. Where are the soldiers?”
“Can only be south, in the gully at the river. Not much of a river now, been so dry. But there’s water deep enough, an’ a cliff high enough ta keep a crowd from escaping.”
“How many?” I asked. “How many soldiers?”
“Thirteen. Three came first, then ten more.” She’d been averting her head, but now she turned to me as if she wanted to study my expression as she said this. “I heard of the slave soldiers before but never did they come fer us like this. A kidnapping here or there—wantin’ a strapping boy or girl fer their mines, but now they took all that weren’t killed. So greedy! An’ still they left me!” She smacked her cane against the bubbling pot.
The pot sloshed, making the fire spit. I glanced at the window. “How soon before they return for the stew?”
“It canna be long. See, I told ye ta hurry off!”
“Never mind that,” I said. “We’re going to help you; we’re going to free your neighbors.”
The old woman snorted. “Ye an’ who else? Ye’ve a sweet face—earnest. I dinna know where yer chased from, but ye best run now or you’ll be another prize fer Tyre. Ye canna fight the metal men.” And then she started and gasped, “La!,” her eyes on the doorway where Laurent had slipped in.
“Mistress.” Laurent acknowledged her with a nod and said softly to me, “The boy is at the well. Feet to the water, head to where the moon will rise.”
The old woman could not tear her eyes from him. “Ye know our customs, but ’tis wasted kindness. There be no one to bury poor Ben.”
“We will free your neighbors,” I repeated. I knew Laurent looked at me.
“Can ye?” The woman turned to the door, waiting, then back to me. “Is there no one else?” And when I said no, she shook her head. “Even wi’ him!” she said. “Him ’n that sword. It’s not enough.”
“No,” Laurent agreed. “It is not enough.”
“ ’Tisn’t the sword,” I said quickly, looking over at Laurent. He raised a brow but I only smiled. “Hide him,” I told the old woman quickly. “Add the honey and a handful of
salt to the stew. Don’t let the soldiers take it yet. I’ll be right back.” And I was out the door before the Rider had any opportunity to say not to go.
I’d seen some of it growing in one of the wrecked gardens: valerian. And jimson weed I was sure I could find in among the rows of corn. I stayed low, skimming from garden to garden, then into the cornfield, stuffing my skirts with what I could rip from the ground. Valerian, jimson weed, and certainly chamomile, which was an easy find among the trampled grass. Easier, of course, would have been the heliotrope that I’d brought from Merith, but that was a wasted wish. I wondered if Harker had used it. I wondered if he’d found an easy sleep.
The smoke was lifting, but so was night falling. Either way, I was nothing more than a shadow among the ruins, gray and quick. But as I pushed out of the corn, I froze. A steel-clad figure stood at the dim-lit doorway of the old woman’s cottage. Did she know? Was the Rider safely stowed?
The old woman came limping out, followed by another soldier. She said something, which I could not hear, and they walked off, silhouettes against the red haze, two of them immense in their thick armor, one stooped over a crutch. Despite the heaved shoulder, the old woman kept her head high. And, crippled or not, it seemed she took extra long in walking—’twas to give me time, I was sure. I watched, touched by her small act of defiance, that maybe she hadn’t given up, and yet I could not stop the doubt: to what end, this defiance? It was rubble, all of it, and she was alone.
I shook myself, then raced to the cottage, practically falling into Laurent, who met me at the door with drawn sword. He was frowning, ready to lecture, but I pushed him back from the entrance. “What are you doing? They’ll be back in a moment.”
He allowed my shove, it barely moved him anyway, but murmured with a none-too-sweet smile, “You expected me to hide while you flit among the ruins?”
I swatted away his concern. “Here, then. Help shred this into the pot.” I shook my skirts so the greens fell to the floor. “Tiny bits. The taste is bitter.”
