by Richard Nell
Ruka had been practicing in his Grove even as his body learned. Time was slower in the realm of the dead, and he had moved through the routine several times. His body was sweaty and tired, though more from heat than exhaustion. His size and height meant he could never truly mimic the young, lithe priest; his muscles were built from hammering and lifts, sword-swinging and shield-bearing—not holding his weight at awkward angles.
Still, he watched, fascinated, and in his Grove he tried.
When the monk finished his spinning and settled on his heels, Ruka stepped forward at once. He noticed the man’s surprise, the serene and gentle features breaking just for a moment as he considered what to do. But he bowed, and stepped away.
Ruka realized he had not been expected to attempt it, and supposed other men might not remember so many movements all at once.
In his Grove, Ruka had ten toes and fingers and practiced in his training grounds. He led his body, watching Tamo again in his mind. The dead watched him and said nothing.
He let Bukayag help him move in the room of sun and ancient runes. It felt different, somehow, from throwing knives or climbing walls or forging steel or murdering. It was easier, more natural, if slightly surreal.
Ruka felt very close to his brother in that moment, as if perhaps in most ways they were not separate men. It felt much like Farahi’s palace when he’d first taken a shield and sword, nothing to something, thought to reality. He wondered if perhaps his Grove was not so different and separate as he once believed, just another truth existing in parallel—like life and death, opposite and conjoined, neither with meaning except for the other.
Ruka moved to the Ching for a few moments simply because he could, and because it was pleasurable. Though it was difficult, it did not require a purpose.
He saw beauty in the light and the strain, thinking how incredible to be here in this warm, strange place of mysteries. He wondered on his fate, and the gods, and the creation of the world. But for a moment, perhaps, it did not matter. Ruka felt a sort of peace in the Ching, knowing the feeling would fade and perhaps did not truly exist, just as joy and perhaps love did not truly exist, and yet did, though they could not be seen. Then he sighed, and stood still, because all at once the dance was over.
Tamo stared at him like the dead men in his Grove. His face grew very calm again, and he bowed and motioned to stay. He left the room, and returned after a time with master Lo.
The old man’s face was blank like Egil’s when he’d meant to deceive. His milky eyes searched Ruka’s face just as Tamo’s had.
“There is but one test left, apprentice. Are you ready?”
Ruka had been ready for anything since he was a boy. He thought of his mother dead in a field, or of standing on the lawstone, and cowering beneath a tarp on the open sea. He was ready to die. He was certainly ready for some priest’s test.
“Yes,” he sighed, watching the harsh light of the drooping sun.
“Remember the symbols,” said the old monk. Then he explained how they must be drawn exactly in reverse in the matching room beside.
Ruka nodded, then walked to the new space. It was covered in empty, square blocks on floors and walls, a mirrored reflection of the testing room. Ruka wondered how any ordinary man should hope to accomplish such a task, but he supposed it didn’t matter.
He picked up the chalk and began, trying only to control his shaking limbs as he filled the emptiness with something, blank space with meaning, one by one across the floors and walls while Lo and Tamo watched him in silence.
“Don’t finish them!” He heard Egil in his mind the first time he’d written a rune—the poor, ignorant fool, afraid of a false prophet’s god. He felt wetness creep to his eyes.
“It…it matters why.” Lo spoke as if by rote, his voice shaking.
Yes, Ruka thought, why and how and when and where, it all matters.
His heart hammered in his ears, and his pace increased now. He scratched the lines so quickly the quality decreased, the edges squiggled and weak as he raced to the next. His hands shook and he began drawing the same symbols in his Grove, tracing them on tablets as the dead ran to fetch more.
He was in a hurry because—at last—he understood. In the right pattern, and from the right direction, the symbols formed words.
The earth seemed to shift beneath his feet, as if waves crashed against him—as if Tegrin the star god stirred the seas with his iron rod. Ruka cursed himself for a fool, racing to read words and sentences of an ancient people made thousands of years before. He had not seen it.
When he was finished, he stood back and looked about the beauty of the room, the simplicity of the test. Nothing had changed, and yet everything—Ruka knew the story of his people.
He read the last words of island men, the final epic of people who called themselves the Vi-sha-n. The symbols he’d written were now a mirrored reflection of the first, the changing order emerging meaning from the runes.
It seemed the Ascom’s words were in truth an ancient tongue, perhaps lost to these ‘foreigners’. They had been held in trust by arctic colonists—preserved as if in the ice for an age of men.
They read like Farahi’s books, up and down rather than left to right, and backwards. But read properly, it weaved a history like the book of Galdra.
“We are the Vishan,” it started. “We are the divine blood, children of the gods. We are all that remains of a butchered people. We few are they who go across the sea. This is our story.”
Ruka could not read every word and meaning. Some runes he had never even seen before, or perhaps they had changed beyond his recognition. But he understood enough.
The story described a people murdered and chased, routed and butchered by some foreign invader. They told of a great war of heaven and earth, a bitter defeat, and a final attempt to cross the uncrossable sea to escape.
The Vishan had run from misery and death. They had been men and women of paradise fleeing usurpers, fleeing a butcher. A traveler. An Enlightened.
But they had survived.
Ruka’s heart felt heavy but glowing with pride. His ancestors had fallen, but they had the courage to face the sea, to risk all for their children and descendants. Now, maybe thousands of years later, here one stood.
“Remember us,” said the Vishan, in their final words. Only that: “Remember us.”
Ruka swore it as he had once sworn to a dying woman in a frozen steppe. He would remember every symbol, every line. It was as if he’d been made to do so.
He dropped to his knees in both the lands of the living and the dead, feeling for the first time what a man of faith might feel—a reverence, perhaps, for a thing he loved but could not touch.
It was as if they’d written the message just for him, as if they had somehow known, and waited, an ancient people crafting him from ash and clay over two thousand years. It was a love note, a silent plea, the last words before a suicide.
I will remember, he promised again, feeling trapped in forces far beyond him, like a fish caught in an ocean current. He clenched one fist and Bukayag the other, seeing justice form on some distant shore, land at last from a stark and endless sea.
His mother had been right to save him. He was not a mistake.
He stood in his Grove and faced the dead, no longer feeling shame. He was not a demon cursed to wander the earth. His darkness had a purpose, his gifts tools for a task left undone, two thousand years in the making. His deeds could be redeemed.
Beyla had carried an ancient vengeance in her womb. She was the holy matriarch of a wounded tribe, the last she-wolf chased into the steppe, the great fire of ash in her breast never dimmed. She had loved a dangerous child, and paid the cost. She had given her life for her people.
But we survived, Ruka thought, feeling his pride spread to the men and women of ash, despite their harsh laws and mistakes and hardness. They too had survived. They had faced the misery of the Ascom, raising children in a long and unbroken line to make Beyla just as she made him
. They had honored the dead, and were worthy. In the end, they had won.
Ruka felt himself wrap in purpose like armor, untouchable and strong. First he had lived only for survival, then revenge, and finally knowledge. All were inadequate. They had all been the closest branch next to a blinded thing, grasping for anything at hand. This was the first that had meaning.
Whatever it took, however long and how much he need sacrifice or suffer—Ruka knew the final purpose of his life would redeem him, as it would redeem the dead and the past and the frozen tears of ten thousand mothers weeping at their infant’s graves. Ruka would bring his mother’s people home.
Chapter 23
1580 AE. On the border of Nong Ming Tong.
Kale watched King Kapule’s commander with his spirit. The Tong army was ten thousand strong, fanned out across the plains in good order, well-fed and bristling with bronze and iron.
“What’s the message, sir?”
The Tong general sat under a shaded veranda, sipping water as he fanned himself. He shrugged.
“The king has a non-aggression treaty with Naran. We enforce it. Nothing else.”
“Understood sir. And if the Mesanites try to cross the border?”
The general smiled. “My orders say nothing else, Captain. Quite specifically, I’d say.”
The younger man returned it. “Yes, General.”
Kale breathed a sigh of relief, and pulled back to his senses. Osco and his men had nearly reached the borders of Nong Ming Tong. They had some small hills to protect them from sight, but with few exceptions they stood in an open plain of grass and farmland.
At least two thousand Naranians stood in their path.
“The Tong won’t stop us.” Kale blinked his tired eyes and ran a hand over his greasy face. “We need only push through the emperor’s men.”
Osco’s eyebrows quirked. “Push through? It’s not a jungle, islander. That’s a great deal of soldiers.”
“Yes I know. I told you their numbers.” Kale tried to push down his frustration. Win or lose, there’d be more needless death, just like Amit, just like the burning forest, the fallen hillmen, the farmers and merchants and scouts. Just let me go, he wanted to scream in the emperor’s face. But nothing was that simple, not with kings. Maybe not ever.
“Can’t you just…form your square and keep moving? Cross the border and they can’t follow us.”
Osco shrugged. “Possibly. They are lightly armed and tired…”
“And lady-men,” Asna added, all smiles now that it looked like they’d make it.
“Yes. Well. We either form a ‘square’, as you say, and they may shoot at us but otherwise flee. Or they will stand, and we will have to kill most of them. Or, we charge and hope to break them. But if they hold and surround us, it could be…unpleasant.” He looked at Kale as if to say ‘can you do something about that?’
“I’ll do what I can.”
Osco’s eyebrows frowned, and Kale let out a breath. He looked away, readying himself for another spirit-flight.
They had time, he thought. The enemy waited and more reinforcements were coming, but they weren’t yet close. He flew out towards the Naranian line, searching for their leaders.
He crossed over a mix of dried up marsh and plains that he knew stretched to the sea. He reached out with his mind and felt nothing but wind and the tingling that clung to wool blankets. The sky looked clear, though something lurked there far away that promised a flood. As he flew he tried looking lower, sifting the earth with his hands out to touch threads lurking in the soil. He found nothing—only huge, hardened cords of earth that fit like fingers in a fist. They felt solid, locked, as hard to move as a mountain with a shovel.
He flew over the haphazard line of the enemy scouts to find a cluster of men arguing behind them.
“And I tell you they’re not half the fighters you think they are!” A young man with a red face pointed a finger at the others. “I’ve seen Mesanite princes in Nanzu with my own eyes. They missed their targets. They failed out in tournaments, ended drills and competitions with the lowest scores. I’m telling you they’ve grown soft!”
Kale blinked in confusion, then thought back to his friend at the warrior college—Osco had never scored high in anything. In fact, he had missed simple shots before a group of students. At the time, Kale thought it just nerves, or maybe anger…
But perhaps all Mesanite nobility did this, and had since becoming ‘vassals’. Was such depth and constancy of deception possible? Kale could see no other explanation. For a moment his mind blanked in open awe.
“They’re in armor with broad shields,” said an older man. “And we have what? Knives and spears?”
The younger man and his supporters looked unmoved.
“With respect, Captain Toda, these are not the Mesanites of your youth. And yes they have armor and shields, but they’ve had to drag them half-way across Naran. Look at them! They can hardly hold them up!”
Kale nearly snorted.
“And what will the Emperor say if we let them cross, eh? Will you face him for us, Captain? In Death Hall? Will you say ‘yes we outnumbered the enemy four to one, Emperor, but we were poorly armed and tired!’
Kale saw enough shame in the other men’s expressions to know their answer. He closed his eyes and returned to his senses, knowing the enemy would fight, and that every man on this field would pay a cost for it—Kale included.
Whatever power he used in this place would be difficult. There were rules. Any strength he drew would come mostly from the air, or from the men’s bodies. It would burn bright and fast and end in death and misery—blood boiling and bursting beneath its own weight, squeezed by force both small and endless, and who knew exactly whose. Kale thought he could snap arrows, twist spears, and break bones, but little else safely.
“You’ll need to form your square,” he said to his ally. “We’ll have to engage them, and hope they break.”
Osco’s eyebrows weren’t encouraging.
If you’re watching, Kale looked the unknown heavens that perhaps held Ru, or powerful spirits, or evil, spiteful Gods watching the conflict with glee, please protect these men, friend or foe. Protect them, and just let us pass.
* * *
Asna wore his armor for the first time since they’d started marching. It was only leather padding, and relatively light compared to the Mesanite’s mix of iron and bronze plates and chain links. He strapped a buckler to his left arm, a heater to his back, and layered his legs and arms with knives.
Two good swords in scabbards dangled at his hips, and he spit when the Mesanites offered him a bow. God damn fools, he thought, attacking archers on a god damn plain. No wonder they never caught grandpapa.
Their enemies were skirmishers, really, not infantry. Osco and his men would traipse about while being shot to hell, charge as the enemy fled, and then get shot to hell some more. In any case no sane man stood against the advance of Mesanite heavy infantry and forget their numbers. So yes of course the scouts would run.
Yet here they all were, everyone formed up like it was otherwise. Yes very good, very impressive, you’re all very brave.
The imperials stood in a ragged line. The hillmen stood in a perfect rectangle. A silence settled between the men, intense and anxious as the infantry entered the edges of the archer’s range.
“Tooooee!”
Osco shouted in his ugly goat tongue, and hundreds of stomps and shouts answered as the men advanced.
Shitting hell. Shitting goat mucking hell. Why am I here? How did this happen to me?
Asna marched because he had no choice. He huddled under his ‘allies’ shields and spared a look at Kale beside him, hoping the islander read his displeasure. You’d best drown me in gold and fish-women, princeling, or I’ll…I’ll…you’ll bloody what, stupid idiot? You’re bound to him now. You’re a criminal everywhere else that matters.
Asna, son of Fetnal, son of some other bastard and no doubt a bunch more, banished all his natur
al instinct to flee. It tugged at his ears like his aunts guarding their raspberries or his cousins’ virginity, and he took deep breaths.
He was here because of fate and fortune, and because he had done a thing his people lived all their lives trying to avoid—he had committed.
Thunks and pings made him flinch as the first arrows fell against thin metal shield. The hillmen didn’t hurry, didn’t slow, didn’t even cry out or grumble as other men would to bolster their courage.
Asna’s world became only the crunch crunch crunching of boots on dying grass, the metal screeching of shield slapped and rubbing against shield, the thwacks and zinging of arrow-tip ramming against the infantry’s barriers.
Soon it would be screaming and sharpened edges cleaving bone and Asna would be in true, open battle for the first time since he was a boy. Unless they run, he thought, which they will.
“Or my mother loves goat-cock,” he yelled. But no one heard in the advance, or would have understood him anyway. He flexed his fingers and wiped at his brow.
The arrows slowed as the Mesanites advanced. He assumed the enemy was falling back and re-positioning, no doubt surrounding the square to fire their arrows until their fingers bled and their quivers emptied. With a sigh he risked a hop to look over the heads and shields of the men around him. Though his glance was brief, he could hardly believe it.
The skirmishers held. They had their spears braced in three ranks, the men directly before the Mesanites holding and ready with their bows discarded.
Do you think this will save you, lady-men? Asna almost laughed aloud. Perhaps it was a trick, like the fuel-sodden wood on the bridge. Perhaps the dry field would light before them. But the islander will protect us, yes? Yes. Nothing to worry us.
Still his hands shook, heart racing but not from the run—for even his allies’ ‘charge’ dripped as sap down a tree. In this last moment he basked in the shade of shields and strong arms, in clean air and clean clothes, knowing all would soon taint and sharpen with messy deaths.
