by Andrew Post
“It’s sweet,” Anoushka said. “Rare, nowadays.”
Mashing down his wild hair only to have it spring back to its full gargantuan bulb, Zuther gazed east, squinting past the cold.
The city waited. It wouldn’t be as simple as a troll in the road. And for Zuther, Anoushka knew, it was speak up or possibly die with his long-bottled love remaining corked forever.
Setting aside his cup, Zuther stood. Following Kylie-Nae’s tracks, he crunched along. Anoushka imagined he was repeating to himself a declaration he’d begun piecing together years ago, hoping now that it was time to stand and deliver, he wouldn’t trip on the syntax.
Alone, Anoushka tossed another log on.
She nearly drew when Russell, covered in so much snow he looked like an adolescent yeti, came trudging back. The dwarf drew down his scarf, looked around. “Where’d everybody go?” he said, holding his hands near the fire’s warmth.
“Your copedaler’s found his nerve,” Anoushka said, pouring the last of the coffee for Russell. She couldn’t see how full his cup was getting with how much it steamed.
“Aye?” Russell said. Even if Anoushka couldn’t see the dwarf’s smile, bundled up as he was, she could certainly hear it. “About time. I’ll ’ave to give the lad a hard time about it tomorrah. Must say,” Russell cheered as he left to return to his watch, “he’d better name me best man!”
“Zee, wait.” Kylie-Nae chased Zuther as he returned to the burnt-down tower hideaway. He began grabbing his things—second coat, scarves, gloves.
When she tried to take his arm, he wrenched away. “With him, Kylie? Fuck’s wrong with you? He killed his wife.”
“It was years ago.”
“Oh, so while the court has a pretty strict statute of limitations on things like that, your pussy doesn’t, I take it?”
Kylie-Nae’s expression hardened—hurt, disgusted. “Hey now.”
“What about that night in the Scorch?”
“I just talked to him. He was upset.”
“So what? He killed his wife. He should always be upset. He brought it on himself.”
Kylie-Nae sighed. “I don’t know what you want me to say here, Zee.”
“Look, I mean . . . I don’t want just that—I want, you know, to get to know you. Actually talk to you. Spend time with you. Every time we stop for dinner, it’s you and Anoushka, me and Russ. And I like hanging out with Russ fine and all, but I want to talk to you once in a while.”
“We talk all the time.”
Zuther pulled on his second and third pairs of gloves. “I just wanted to tell you before tomorrow,” he said. Hands apparently numb, his gloves were giving him trouble. Kylie-Nae tried helping him, but again, he jerked away. “I got it.”
“I’m glad you told me,” Kylie-Nae said. “Zee, please, I’m really glad you did. It means a lot to me.”
“Great. It means a lot to you. What did Matthew have to say?”
“What?”
“When you two started up your whole . . . thing, your fling. What did he have to say? ‘How’s about it? I suppose you’ll do,’ and you just threw yourself at him?”
“Guys,” Anoushka tried. “Keep it down, okay?”
Russell, down on the roadside, had turned around. If he could hear them, who else could?
Kylie-Nae said, “That’s not fair.”
“What’s not fair is that Matthew never gave a shit about you—but I did,” Zuther said. “And even though I’m pretty damn sure you knew, you just didn’t care. Fuck, I still can’t believe you were fucking Peter. He murdered his wife, and yet, here I am, never having murdered anybody, and I don’t get to—”
“Get to? Get to?”
“Kylie, shit, I only meant—”
“I’m not just some hole that randomly deems who’s good enough for a poke. I fucked Peter, yeah. I fucked Matthew, yeah. And I didn’t fuck you,” Kylie-Nae shouted. “I didn’t mean for it to make you go and join the fucking church—just to make me feel bad, showing me how far you were willing to go to forget me, that you were punishing yourself—and thereby punish me too.”
“That’s not why I joined.”
A light came on in Ruprecht’s caravan.
“It’s not?” Kylie-Nae scoffed. “Really? Maybe you’d care to elaborate—”
“Stop. We’re not talking about me here,” Zuther said, hands out. “All I wanna know is why you’d fuck a convicted killer but not—”
“No, we are gonna talk about you!” Kylie-Nae’s breath steamed Zuther’s face. “All those letters you sent me, all your bullshit about how much you were thinking about me, wishing you could see me . . . it freaked me out, Zee. I got—from you, in one week alone—twenty-seven godsdamned letters. Twenty. Seven. And never in any did you ever get to the point. You’d just go on and on and on but never quite say it.” After a deep gulp of air, though Kylie-Nae clearly had more, she released the breath in a long sigh—biting it into a snarl. “You should’ve said something. Spoken up. That’s all. Can’t read minds, you know.”
“So you knew,” Zuther said.
“Yeah, but I wasn’t sure if you did. You never said anything; you never spelled it out.”
“I wanted to be a gentleman about it,” Zuther said. “But now I know how I should’ve been acting all along.” Done wrapping himself in scarves and a third coat, he bent, picking up his six-gun.
“Zee, whoa,” Anoushka said, standing.
Zuther shoved past Kylie-Nae and stomped toward the woods again, this time following Peter and Teetee’s slowly vanishing trail.
As he passed alongside the parked caravan, the rear door creaked open. “Mister Fuath?”
Marching backward for a moment to answer Ruprecht, Zuther cupped his mouth and shouted, “Yeah?”
“I’d recommend not bothering Mister Elloch while he’s sleeping. He needs his rest. As do you. Why don’t you come join me for a nightcap, yes?”
Zuther turned and sprinted away, disappearing into the frozen dark.
Ruprecht dropped out of the back of his caravan in his dressing gown, hastily wrestling a jacket over it. He thrust a finger toward where Zuther had gone. “Miss Demaine, I suggest you tend to this before it gets out of hand.”
She wanted to bark back that she didn’t take orders from him, but given the potential outcome of what Zuther was setting out to do, she told the others to wait, she’d handle it, and chased after.
“Please keep your team under control,” Ruprecht yelled at her back. “We’re nearly there. Be a shame to let the infighting get the better of us when we’re so close to catching our quarry.”
Anoushka stopped and turned. Didn’t say anything, just looked his way. Peter wasn’t around—and with one glare from Anoushka, Ruprecht seemed to realize it too. He scrambled back inside his caravan and snapped the lock.
As soon as she’d moved away from the fire’s heat, the cold was overwhelming—even for her. She went without a hood, without her hat and jacket—she’d lent them to the others. She just hoped resolving this wouldn’t keep her away too long.
* * *
The moonlight filtering through dark snow clouds and birch branches barely lit the ground at Anoushka’s feet. She kept on, trying to follow Zuther’s tracks, tripping on hidden roots.
“Zuther? Godsdammit—Zuther!”
She paused to listen.
Nothing. Just the wind lapping through the grove as if hunting her down, hungry to needle her eyes.
She trudged on, bowing into the wind, frozen fists in her pockets.
A voice tore out in the dark. “Did they at least leave you your balls? Not that the berries are much without the twig, right? Come on out, man. Let’s settle this shit. Let’s get it all out in the open. Think you’re King Fuck of Bullshit Hill now? Come prove it.”
Anoushka tried following where she thought Zuther was yelling from, but he was still on the move, likely hollering as he checked every divot made by a fallen tree and hollow log. She needed to reach Zuther before he fo
und where Peter had dug in for the night. The berserker wouldn’t be as patient as Anoushka.
“Zuther, stop!” Anoushka yelled.
A crunch of ice—over there. Anoushka drew. Better to be safe than sorry if it wasn’t Zuther. She heard him yelling again—“Show your face, asshole!”—it wasn’t coming from where she’d heard the step.
Threading along the tree trunks, Anoushka approached.
A shape. Big. Staying low to hide its bulk, it looked deeper into the grove, toward the sound of Zuther’s voice. Anoushka, on its left, had not yet been noticed.
She stared, eyes burning, trying to recognize something in the silhouette—but it was too dark and masked too well by the continual pour of snow. A smell wafted her way—oily, earthy. Could be Peter just as likely as an orc scout.
She dared another step, carefully lowering her boot sole, another. Wincing each time the snow creaked or popped under her heel, at less than four strides away, she aimed at where she guessed its head was in that stooped pile of shadows.
“Don’t turn toward me.”
The figure flinched but kept facing away. Closer, she began to make out details. Dark hair, ratty long underwear. She couldn’t see what the person was holding, close to the curled body.
“Drop it.”
A battle-ax was raised, then dropped aside—carving its shape into the snow.
“Peter?”
He remained as he was, facing where the grove sloped into a small gorge. An iced-over creek slid down its grade, shining.
Zuther was down inside, yelling, snapping branches, and trying to spook Peter from hiding by throwing rocks at thickets.
“If there’s scouts out here,” Peter whispered, “orc or Committee, they’ll hear him.”
“I know. But he’s pissed.”
“About what?”
“You.” She holstered. “Head back. Sleep in the caravan with Ruprecht tonight.”
Peter issued a chirrup through his teeth—and Teetee emerged from where he’d been posted, near a smooth boulder. Anoushka never even knew he was there. The wolfhound lay next to Peter, receiving a scratch behind the ear.
“Do you want to discuss something with me?” Peter said. “Maybe about what happened at the church, since Mister LeFevre’s not around?” He turned, dangling mass of snarly beard, moonlight catching his left eye, the other swallowed by the dark. His breaths became long. At the end of each exhale came a trailing, furious wheeze. The snow around his bare feet began to melt, widening the rings around his ankles. She could feel the heat radiating off of him—licking under her chin, across the backs of her cold-reddened hands.
“Tracking me tracking him?” he said. “That it?”
“No. Look, everyone’s tired. Take Teetee, return to camp, and I’ll talk to Zuther.”
As he remained crouched, a small river started trickling under him. The snow had melted down to the raw black dirt.
Anoushka wound numb fingers around the mammoth-killer’s grip—but didn’t draw. Not yet. “It’s not a trick, Peter. And, yes, while we do have a lot to discuss, this isn’t the time.”
He stood, faced her. Teetee was right beside him in an instant, head low, golden eyes watching.
Anoushka drew but let the gun hang at her side. “Go back to camp.”
Berserker steam building thick against the cold, Peter became the ghost of a grizzly haunting the pale trees. “Say what you need to say,” came from somewhere within. The fog-thing shifted, to look with unseen eyes at the ax-shaped dent in the snow.
“Leave it.” Anoushka couldn’t deny a very large part of her was screaming, Shoot him! He wasn’t wearing his armor, and from this close, there was little chance of missing. But she knew, even if she did take Peter out, Teetee would pounce before she could land a bead on the wolfhound.
“Peter, be honest with me. Was Ruprecht at your sentencing?”
“No.”
“You said he was. You told me he was.”
“I was mistaken,” said the fog.
“Why lie about this? Why side with him if there’s even a hint he’s working for Lyle? It won’t turn out good, Peter. It won’t.”
“Can’t even count how many times I should’ve died. When I was sentenced for what I did to Marianne. On all our contracts. And after that, sentenced, again, for the Buckleys. Those six years in Breakshale. Over these past weeks. And now. The end can come at any time. I face it without worry because there’s no one keeping score. There is no final tally, no good and bad columns. Lies don’t mean anything, because there is no absolute truth, no gods watching to check boxes when we do wrong. It just ends, then nothing. None of it matters.” He stamped, pressing a steaming print into the mud and snow. “This is all we get. Mister LeFevre wants me to find Lyle Eichelberger. And I want to find him too.”
It didn’t take Peter time anymore; his berserker heat, now, could be shut away like a spun valve. Peter didn’t seem disoriented or surprised at all to find himself standing here having this conversation in only his underclothes in the middle of the woods. He knew exactly what he’d done. “This is what the story needs to be.”
As much as she wanted to call him a fool, spit at him, and maybe shoot him just for the frustration, Anoushka stepped aside to let him pass. Peter lifted his ax from the snow and followed Anoushka’s trail to lead him back to the camp, only pausing to shake his bundled pile of armor where he’d hidden at the base of a tree. Casually, he lugged the lashed-together mass of black metal over his shoulder. He didn’t need to keep the Dark Against Dark cover workup close anymore; he was a creature who’d been shown to its habitat, coaxed from its cage, and now ran free.
Only Teetee paused to give her a brief unreadable look. A whistle from his master brought him to attention, and the wolfhound turned to dash off to catch up.
The minute Anoushka was sure Peter wouldn’t see, she took her hand off her holstered gun to clap it to her chest. Leaning against a tree, she fought to slow her heart. It was beneficial to a degree, the upset. The cold, for a little, didn’t sting as much. But her thoughts still rioted: We’re so screwed.
Zuther continued to yell down in the nearby gorge. But it wasn’t with the same rage he’d started with. It had eroded, leaving him panting. “I’m waiting . . . hero boy. I’m . . . willing to settle . . . this tonight. Right here . . . right now . . .”
Anoushka carefully skidded down into the dip in the earth, to where Zuther, at the bottom, wielded a six-gun in one hand and a frost-serrated branch in the other. He’d sat on a rock beside the frozen-over creek.
“Go get warmed up,” she said.
“Did you see him?”
“Yeah, and he’s heading back to camp—same as you should be. Go. You talked about feeling like a little kid: I think you were exactly right. And do you really think you stood a chance with that?”
Zuther tossed the ice-barbed branch aside. “I feel like an asshole.”
“Understandable.” Anoushka leaned in to tug up his sleeve and press two fingers to the inside of his wrist.
He pulled away. “I’m fine. I’m me.”
She sat beside him. Falling snow hissed through the branches, the occasional owl hoot. You’d never know a sacked city waited over the next hill or two, brimming with orcs.
“You should apologize to Kylie-Nae when you get back.”
“Won’t make a difference.”
“It will. She shouldn’t have all this on her mind tomorrow. It needs to be resolved tonight.”
Zuther’s shoulders raised, slumped, his breath fogging the air before his face. “I don’t get it. I mean, why him? Of all people, him.”
“I don’t know,” Anoushka said. She really didn’t.
“Heart wants what the heart wants?”
“If it makes you feel better, sure.”
Zuther chuckled. “Shit.” He looked off into the snow-blown distance. “I dreamt when we were in the Scorch that I killed her. I still feel bad about it, just dreaming it.”
“That
will happen there,” Anoushka said. She stood, held out her hand.
Zuther took it, and she pulled him to his feet. His clothes crackled when his knees and back straightened.
They started up the hill, slipping on the gorge’s icy slope. “At least you finally told her. Could’ve stood to be a little more tactful about it, but you still told her.”
Zuther sniffed a little laugh. “Yeah. True.”
* * *
In the morning, leaving the others to scrounge some decent firewood for coffee, Anoushka carefully moved down into the roadside ditch, snow up to her knees, and up onto the long man-made gravel path supporting the railroad. Kicking away some of the glistening powder, she uncovered the buried iron rail beneath. She gazed back the way they’d come, listening hard for a train whistle out in the blustering wind. Sir Gunnar Calhoun said they’d be coming, but with the tracks in such a state, she wondered if any locomotive could make it through. She imagined somewhere between Yarnigrad and here, the soldiers had been stalled. And here she’d thought they’d be the late ones.
“If a train bound for New Kambleburg is going sixty miles per hour, but the track is completely blocked with ice, how long will it take them to arrive?” Shit. Balancing on the steel rail, Anoushka pivoted to face the gulf. Faint in the distance, the Error’s arrangement of twisted stone towers rose from the water. The water hadn’t frozen hard all the way over yet but was thickening with each lap against the coast. Soon, one or two degrees colder, to hold that way till next Springbloom.
Turning again, Anoushka faced their path ahead.
The falling snow allowed only a stride’s distance of clarity before it degraded to impenetrable white. She wondered if the Blackiron Blaggards had made it before the storm.
Anoushka smiled, thinking about Erik, forcing herself to remember only the better times. He could sometimes make her uncomfortable at how he’d give himself so total and bare, no posturing or feigning. Closing her eyes, trying to draw as much detail into some of her memories of nights with Erik as she could—some genuine and some reinvented—Anoushka pleaded with the rail to begin quaking under her feet. It remained still.
