by Andrew Post
Through the barrage of lightning bugs in her eyes, she looked down into Peter’s fog-bleeding helm grille. She kicked, opening the grille and clearing some of the fog. Again, she kicked limply, only clonking dully with his breastplate this time. Then again. Harder, higher. She felt weak. She could hardly see. She heard, and felt, a crunch with the next kick. But his grip remained steady, even as she landed another blow.
Turning with her, he moved over to one of the square’s hitching posts. With its decorative horse head having been sheared off in the siege, it was now a spear staked into the cement. As he walked her over, she watched over his shoulder. At Russell getting mauled. At Teetee refusing to let go—blood pouring from the dog’s muzzle. Once there was no more fight in Russell, Teetee would make good on his namesake and go for the neck.
And farther away: Ruprecht, watching this unfold from Joan’s open flank, cradling his smashed hand. This isn’t how it was supposed to go, his pitiful look read.
She could see it, in print, what he’d salvage from this mess: “While the others gave their lives valiantly, Peter Elloch pressed bravely on to relieve Rammelstaad of the scourge known as the Baron of Decay . . .”
In position over the spike, Peter raised her high. She tried struggling, to maybe make herself roll out of his hands and down his back to safety, but her body refused her. She felt made of stone.
“I did it,” Russell shouted. “Just get this godsdamn thing offa me!”
Peter halted but kept Anoushka raised, ready to skewer.
Stepping down out of Joan, Ruprecht asked, “Did what? Did what, Mister Ironbeird?”
Peter dropped her next to the hitching post. She clutched at her throat, hacking and sputtering, dizzy. The world’s noise—the clatter of Peter’s armor, the snarls of the wolfhound—all snapped back to volume.
With only a two-note whistle needed to command him, Teetee released Russell.
Pale strips of shredded flesh hung. Clutching it close, Russell gasped and hissed as cold air passed over the exposed red undertissue. Shoving aside an orc’s corpse to clear a spot, he sat on the curb.
Teetee, at Peter’s side, fur gory, licked blood from his snout. Russell glared at the wolfhound, but the look’s heat wasn’t returned—only doing his job. Then up at Peter towering before the dwarf. The mane of fog had cleared from around the berserker’s face—Anoushka had broken his nose.
Anoushka forced her crushed throat to ask, “What did you do, Russ?”
Russell raised his head but only to look at Anoushka.
“Every break we got,” he said, “when we’d all head home, Tara and I . . . she kept sayin’ I’d . . . changed, that I was different somehow. Angry. It wasn’t bein’ on the squad, our work, but something else. And she told me she was gonnae leave me if I kept coming home like that. And I’ll say it, I was losin’ me temper on the frequent. Gave me one boy a swat he’d hadn’t earned.” He shook his head, beard wagging. “I knew that call from the Ma’am, for all of us to head in, was gonna be it. And I knew comin’ home, after, still not better, meant I was gonna lose Tara.
“When we got our mail drop the week before we were to head out, there it was. She was leavin’ me. I knew I’d been taking it out on her. Not strikin’ her or anything like that . . . but just wasn’t who she married anymore. But I also knew it wasn’t because of none of us, because I was fine before . . . it’s just . . . when he came on. For the longest time I tried, but ye got in me somehow.”
“What did you do, Russ?” Anoushka said, terrified to have it answered.
“I was the first to leave when we split,” he said, calming. “I did that on purpose. I went home first, to see if I could talk Tara into staying. But she’d already gone, took the boys. House empty, everything except my things. No letter, no nothing. Off, somewhere. Didn’t know where for almost a month. Didn’t know if the boys were okay, if she was all right, if she’d made it wherever she was going . . . I left one morning, headin’ out not even knowing what I was gonna do. But I knew why I was gonna do it; I was gonna find some way to set him up, get him put away.” Russell’s volume began to rise again. “Because he never deserved to be free in the first fuckin’ place. He belonged dead. He had his one shot, and he blew it—killed his godsdamn wife—and they released him? To be around us? That’s why I made it so he’d never be able to luck his way out of what he deserved. But I never fuckin’ thought he’d get Breakshale instead.
“I . . . didn’t know who they were. Not that it’s any excuse, but . . . I waited on the road, few miles outside New Delta. I turned over my cart, waving people past, trying to get up my nerve. This fancy roadster approached. I came near, shouting I needed help. I’d bought an ax, similar to the kind he wields. Soon as they’d stopped, I hit the man driving. Took his head off, first swing. Then climbing on the hood—they had the top down—I got his wife. She was almost out of the car, wailing.
“I didn’t know about the little ones sleeping in the backseat. They saw what I’d done, and they were screaming. The older one tried to run. Got out, started making for the tree line. I couldn’t let it be reported it’d been a dwarf. I couldn’t let . . .” Russell’s hand clamped over his mouth, tears spilling. “I had to get them all. I had to report it meself, sayin’ it was him, or . . .” Tears rolled out from under his outcropping brow, shining. “Every day. I can see it, remember it, me doin’ that. To those people . . . their sons, no older than me own. It’s like a dream. I see myself doing it. I see myself telling the Committee investigators who I saw doing it, hear myself describing Peter . . . but I still can’t really believe I did it, that it really happened, that I actually made it all happen.”
He looked up at Peter. “When Annie told me she wanted to break ye out, lad, I knew I had to help. It was my chance, to make up for gettin’ ye sent there. I thought this, huntin’ Lyle alongside ye, somehow might . . . make up for what I’d done. Start to, at least. Just . . . do with me as you will.”
Peter’s scattergun lay across the way, his ax still standing sunk in the cobblestones. The berserker made no move to retrieve either.
Amid the wreckage of the fountain, Anoushka found her mammoth-killer. Bringing it over at her side, shaking the dampness out of it, she stood next to Peter and said, “Zuther and Kylie-Nae are out there, looking for Lyle. You either deal with him now or put it aside for later.” As she spoke, out of the corner of her eye she saw Russell lower his gaze. He removed his bowler, holding it in his unmauled hand, ready.
With a scrape of armored boot on stone, Peter turned away. He retrieved his scattergun, ducked into its strap, then tugged free his ax. He paused to lift the orc’s crank gun with its dangling four feet of bullet belt. His footfalls echoed off the abandoned homes and storefronts as he marched down a new street, Teetee’s clicking toenails following.
Anoushka bent to speak to the side of Russell’s face. “Last time we were here, I remember there was a pub over that way. A nice one. Go.”
He started to reach for his fallen six-gun.
“Leave it.”
“I wasn’t gonna do anything. Just force of habit, minding your weapons . . .”
“Go.”
Nodding, Russell grunted and stood up from the curb. Held close, his arm bled into his shirt, dribbled down the legs of his knickerbockers. As he shuffled, he wasn’t keeping watch ahead. Didn’t glance up to check second-story windows on either side for moving curtains. Down the middle of the lane, holster empty. His boots scuffed the snowy dark cobble, a dotted red trail behind.
Distantly, a door’s chime jingled followed by thin glass rattling in its frame as it shut. Only then did Anoushka turn toward Ruprecht again.
She picked up Russell’s pistol and flung it over to Ruprecht—he acted as if she’d flung a snake at him. He fumbled with his broken fingers, having to use his right hand to retrieve it from the ground.
“Try not to kill yourself with it.”
“Do you think Lyle’s fled?” the bard said, awkwardly tucking th
e gun into his riding cloak pocket.
“Really? Nothing to say about this, just now?”
Ruprecht furrowed. “I could express my relief in having my innocence finally proven. Shame it took what it took to get there.” He glanced at his hand with the purple fingers sticking out in unnatural directions. “But at least it’s behind us, resolved.”
“Not that,” Anoushka said. “About your hero showing mercy. Or this, what I’m about to go do. Nothing to say?” She motioned the way Russell had gone to wait. “Or care to come watch, to get the scene down accurately?”
Looking pained, Ruprecht licked his lips, gave a small shake of his head.
“What happened to being there as the action happens?”
“Where is this coming from? I thought—”
“What will you write?”
“Why are you saying this to me? We have the facts; I had nothing to do with the Buckleys. I’m innocent. Miss Demaine, I believe you are unwell.”
Anoushka laughed. She was doubled over, coughing and trying to catch her breath.
“I don’t know what else to say here,” Ruprecht said meekly. “I’d rather we return to focusing on finding Lyle and—”
“Me too. Go find Zuther and Kylie-Nae and help them. I’ll be along shortly.”
“Are you . . . really going to kill Mister Ironbeird?”
“You’ll know only if you come with me. Well? Shall we?”
Ruprecht opened his mouth, closed it.
“Like I thought.” Anoushka turned away to head to where her pedaler waited.
Mother of Mercy
It was dark inside, save for the single oil lamp on the bar throwing meager, amber light. On brick walls, tin signs advertised cigars and men’s hats. The occupation had started on a weekend—the tables were still crowded with half-full glasses and unfinished meals of the interrupted merrymakers. On a righted stool, the pedaler sat with elbows propped up. He had found a bottle of the whiskey she had mentioned. A filled glass waited before him on the shiny, lacquered bar. His arm had accumulated a puddle that had overtaken the glass, encircling it. Blood dripped off the edge, small, slow taps as a second puddle started on the floor by his dangling feet. It was the only sound accompanying the hiss of falling snow against the windows.
The old hardwood popped and creaked under her boots. Anoushka went around behind the bar and stood in front of the dwarf on the other side. Russell wouldn’t look at her. The honey-colored liquor rippled as his breath passed over its surface. Tears slid out from the shadow of his heavy brow.
“Do you think there really is a thirteen blazes?”
“I don’t know.”
Somewhere in the mauled ruins of his arm, Russell’s wedding ring shone, catching the flickering lantern light. With his uninjured hand, he delicately slid the ring off the stumped finger. From inside his shirt pocket it drew a perfect red circle.
“Okay,” he said.
“Down that first.”
He finally looked at her. “You don’t owe me anything, Annie.”
“I know.” She took a glass for herself. “Drink.”
After swallowing the shot, he knocked the glass against the bar once, then a second time.
Anoushka did the same. The empty sockets in her jaw, thanks to Peter, still stung. She refilled his glass, and hers.
“When we were running in there to get Peter, I was thinkin’ how it was as if I was wee and on the back of my parents’ cart lookin’ at the sick raccoon. Except I was doing something, like I shoulda then. It felt good, to be goin’ in there to save him—he didn’t belong there. Now I see we aren’t the ones in position of getting rid of the sick. We’re the sick. Not only me. And it’s the rest of the world sitting idle, watching us suffer. What I did was wrong, Annie. Please. Please say something.”
“With Lyle possibly in the city, it has to be the head.”
Russell Ironbeird put his hands flat on the bar and bowed his head, took a deep breath, and began releasing it, slow, a quiet prolonged sigh. He didn’t take another. He was waiting. A kindness, though undeserved, she gave: she made it quick.
In the ringing silence, Russ lying on the floor, legs twisted up in the toppled stool, Anoushka looked about the smoky room with burning eyes. This wasn’t some quaint little New Kambleburgian hole-in-the-wall dive. Not anymore. She could see the ghosts already pressing themselves into the mortar between the bricks. Into the dark and light slashes of the bar’s wood grain. If she lived to see the world outside these city walls or visit this port town again, this particular spot would never hold any other label than haunted. The past was all stories. This would be the setting of one she’d never want to revisit.
The bells chimed as she stepped back out into the cold. She closed the door on the scene behind her. She swore to herself once Lyle was dealt with, she’d return to bury Russell properly. Or not. Because, really, he didn’t deserve it. He’d earned a fate that involved his corpse being taken by whatever vermin happened to come across him. But she wanted to. A wayward man, full of faults by the end, could not have the good of his life completely negated. Or could he?
Was there nothing keeping score, as Peter claimed? Was there nothing checking boxes each time they fouled up? Did any of it matter? Was justice a made thing? Was evil? Anoushka didn’t know. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d prayed. But she remembered she felt like an idiot while doing it. Her father had gotten sick, and it was up to her and her mother to run the bakery. In the weeks it took him to get well enough to start rolling dough again, they’d nearly gone under. Anoushka had prayed, murmuring words to an invisible thing that had done this to them—and therefore, in her six-year-old mind, could undo it if only asked nicely enough—on her knees, next to her bed, in the dark. It was medicine that saved her father. It was a doctor, a man, skillful hands, measuring out pills and pressing down her father’s tongue with a little flat wooden stick that saved him.
And here, now, the only thing that could fix this was in her hands. She prayed to herself. To her hands. To her tools. To the things she could touch, grasp, and use and trust: Keep working, please.
Her tears threatened to freeze onto her face.
Each step away from the pub took concentration; her legs were gelatin, the air felt barbed, hooking in her throat.
The carnage she’d also been responsible for started back under her boots as she neared the square. The returning vinegary stink raked at her again. Bits of blasted gristle, guts, and bones; three steps more and it was nothing but that.
She splashed over to Joan, the tank’s high barrel still glowing a dull orange. Stinging her bare palms, Anoushka leaned on it, pressing her forehead to the metal. It was too cold for it to echo her warmth, but she held nonetheless. Absorb me, she pleaded. Help me become unbreakable and unfeeling—no need for absolving if nothing was ever felt in the first place.
Something slammed nearby. Not loud, but she still gasped, drew, whirled about, slapping to clear her eyes.
Watching the storefront windows, she waited for shadows to move and the sound to repeat.
Treading lightly, she moved up close, under the awning the row of stores shared. Passing along the leaded glass storefronts, stop after stop, she paused when she came to the telegram office—another thud, inside, halted her.
The wooden sign swung in the cold wind, its glass face giving her a reflection of the shop’s interior but only for a flash when the sign was at the lowest part of its swing. Just the complicated mass of heaps of wires, the little seating area for those waiting for their messages, a counter, a massive shelf of pigeonholes for slotting the transcribed, typed-up messages.
Keeping to one side, she reached out, turned the knob, pushed the door in, and jumped back, expecting gunfire. When none came, she dared a quick peek, checking one half of the room with a first glance. Then the other, with a second. Clear. She stepped inside, quickly closing the door behind her. Lifting the partition in the counter, she went behind into the office area. The smell of i
nk and carbon paper was heavy. A series of abandoned desks, abandoned typing machines. More wires, in long insulated brown coils overhead. The deeters themselves, a small army of the contraptions, waited to receive their coded, rhythmic taps.
The manager’s office, at the back of the long room, was open an inch to allow a slip of light to escape. It shone consistently, electric powered. A buzz grew louder as she approached.
She toed the door aside. A small crank generator stood on the desk, a naked bulb screwed into its side flaring the room shadowless. Behind it, obscured by the burning bulb, a figure. Its back was to her. Long hair tied in a ponytail. Black cloak. A knapsack on its back, bulging full, heavy. It was rummaging through the bins containing long strips of raw incoming code, pulling them through slim fingers like a jeweler might examine each link of a necklace. On the floor were others, miles of the strips in a mound.
“Hands.”
Dropping the code strip, it raised not bony things, as she’d expect Lyle Eichelberger to have, but thin, delicate things. Hands that looked like they might feel rough—the good kind of rough. Hands she knew.
She lowered. “Erik?”
He turned. “Anoushka?” he said, laughing with relief.
“How long have you been here?”
“Two weeks,” he said, then paused. “Maybe three. I don’t know. I heard some noise in the square but figured it was infighting. They tend to do that, when there’s nothing for the orcs to kill other than each other. I . . . think it was you who told me that.”
“Any sign of Lyle?” Anoushka said. She nudged the pile of paper strips with her boot. “Anything in any of this?”
“Nothing on Lyle, but . . . You should probably see this.” Erik handed a three-foot strip to her.
It was from the Committee, dated last month. She ran the strip through her fingers, reading, feeling herself sink as she passed over each stamped inch. They decided to strengthen Edgewatch and call it the new line. Everything south of the Scorch was to be considered a loss, sacrificed territory.
