A man rushed him from the throng. Trajan shouted. The words were lost. The warrior wore full fogplate, stained with charcoal and dried mud. Runes had been etched across it. A demon’s face had been painted in red over the opaque gray faceplate, leaving only the eyes clear. An atomblade whirled in each hand. Lightning-quick, the man met Meric with a ferocious assault.
Meric fell back, defending. Slivers of his shield were cut away. The attacks came without form. No routine movements. The man flowed like water in a river, like air in a tornado. Meric gasped as the tip of a blade penetrated the armor over his left shoulder, drawing blood. He knocked the blade aside with his shield.
Enraged, Meric reversed his fall-back with a sudden charge, using his greater size to bowl the man over. His enemy hit the ground. Meric kicked at his left wrist. An atomblade clattered over gravel. He thrust at the man’s throat, but his blade sunk into the earth. Legs twisted between Meric’s own, kicking sideways, bringing him to the ground.
The savage sprung on top of him, too close to strike. Meric caught his wrist and twisted. The second atomblade dropped. The enemy found a rock and tried to brain him. Meric overpowered him. They grappled in the dirt, rolling. He lost his shield but came out on top, pinning him, ripping the man’s helmet off. He drew his blade back for the kill…
…and froze, staring into grass-green eyes as fierce as a rushing river. Blonde locks tumbled into the dust. Teeth were clenched between ruby lips.
“A woman,” Meric said, dumbfounded. He’d already seen savage women cutting down legionnaires. Why should this one be any different? Still, those eyes froze him. A breath passed. Another. His arm was immobile, unwilling.
The blow came from the back of the head.
The tooth! he thought, but everything went black.
CHAPTER 7
Meric woke tied to a metal bed, head throbbing, and for a moment all he could do was close his eyes and try to come to terms with his capture. The poison-cap had been removed. His armor was gone as well. His shirt was off and a bandage covered his shoulder where the atomblade had pierced him. The woman’s atomblade. She’d tried to kill him. Why hadn’t he finished her? It wouldn’t have mattered. He couldn’t have overcome them all. There would be pain now. Torture. The Fog only knew what suffering he’d have to endure.
Swan, dear Swan, how I wish I was with you–wherever you are.
“You’re awake,” a man said.
Meric opened his eyes. He was in a strange room lit by tubular fluorescent lights. A fan behind a grating pushed air into the room. A large machine hummed and vibrated in one corner. Next to it was a black cylinder with three small green lights. Trajan sat with his back to it, a knife in one hand, whittling a soapstone carving. The muscles in his forearms stood out as he worked. The mirrored shades were still on, attached to a strap that circled his head. His blonde-gray hair was long and straight. He set down the knife and carving, put his right fist over his heart and extended his left hand with an open palm.
“We haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Trajan. Your name?”
Meric closed his eyes and waited for the torture to begin. Trajan sighed.
“Usually I’d begin by telling you how badly you’ve been lied to, but that speech is getting old. Your programming runs too deep. You’ll just deny everything and call me a liar. I’ve decided to pass the burden this time,” Trajan said.
Trajan left the room. Meric tested his injured shoulder, moving it in painful circles. Why bother bandaging him? So he could be in good health when they flayed him? Footsteps approached. What would it feel like to have his entrails pulled out? He had to face it. There was no running now. He braced himself.
“Trajan thinks the things I say will matter, but I know better. You see, I remember what it was like to be lying there.”
Meric opened his eyes a fraction. A middle-aged man with sad blue eyes and mottled black-gray hair sat beside his bed, staring into the distance.
“For a while, the only thing I expected was to die,” the man said. “I was convinced everything Trajan told me was a lie. I’ve tried to think of something I could’ve told my old self to make it easier, but true belief dies hard. Sometimes it’s easier to live with lies. Some people would rather do that their entire life. Guess we’ll find out if you’re one of ‘em.”
Meric cleared his throat.
“I’ve seen what you do to captives,” he said.
“See what I mean? Truth can be hard to recognize. It’s okay. When I answered the Calling, they showed me pictures too. Mangled bodies. Tortured soldiers. I remember the stories. Life is curiously cyclical. First we build up our illusions, then we become convinced of their validity, then shit happens, and we have to tear it all down. If we were wise, we’d stop at that point–we’d stay like children, without assumptions, without preconceptions. But the mind can’t help itself. It builds up new ideas, and then we’re even more convinced we’ve found the Truth. Yet again our beliefs fail us. Again our mental constructs prove fallible. Why? Perhaps because the chaos of the universe cannot be so neatly ordered. Ideas are rigid things. Reality is liquid. So it goes. Sorry, I ramble. I’m Diodorus. You were a blackberry farmer. It’s obvious from the stains on your hands. I myself worked in a spirithouse on Humble Road.”
As he said his name, Diodorus flashed the same savage gesture Trajan had used: right fist over heart, left palm open.
“You’re a savage,” Meric said, outraged by the temerity of the lie.
“Am I? What does that mean, ‘savage?’ I live in the Wildlands, but I was born in Panchaea. Did you think you were the only soldier ever captured? No, of course not, but you thought the others were killed. Perhaps in the old days that was even true. Trajan has forbidden harming captives. There’s a dozen former Plebians camped on this very mountain.”
Meric gave a mirthless laugh.
“You won’t muddle my mind with your lies,” he said.
“Your mind is already so muddled you can’t tell up from down. If you only knew how thick the irony is from this side of the table. Godsblood, was I really like you? How insufferable I must’ve been. No offense.”
“How big of a fool do you think I am?” Meric asked.
“An enormous one,” Diodorus said, shrugging.
“So you know the names of a few places in Panchaea. Likely you tortured it out of a captive. For what sick purpose, I care not.”
“How well the mind fights to preserve its illusions. As I told Trajan, nothing I say will matter. Yet you will change. The world demands it. In a way, I envy you, yet I wouldn’t want to trade places. Truth is not easily encapsulated by the rigid boundaries of human conception. When you shed your illusions, you’re going to recognize something pure, something real beneath it all, and it’s going to be beautiful–but it’s also going to be painful. Change has a price, and it’s paid in suffering.”
*
After Diodorus left, Trajan returned with food. Meric ignored it. Two more meals passed uneaten, but he grew thirsty enough to accept water. He slept on and off, always expecting to be tortured. Always he was kept waiting, until he began to suspect that the wait itself was a form of torture.
“Get on with it already!” he shouted on the second day, or what he thought was the second day. He had no view of the outside world, and the lights inside never changed.
“To what exactly are you referring?” Trajan asked. Most of the savage-king’s time was spent sitting silently by the black cylinder, communing with what Meric took to be a heathen idol. Having finished with that for the time being, he was carving his soapstone figure again.
“Whatever you’re going to do,” Meric said.
Trajan considered him.
“Very well,” he said. He left the room.
When he returned, Diodorus and another man were with him. The second man was short and broad, with a shaved pate and rugged countenance. It looked like he’d been hit in the face with a board, and his nose had frozen that way. He popped a pecan into his mou
th, then handed one up to the midnight-black squirrel perched on his shoulder. The squirrel watched Meric, nibbling the pecan in its nimble fingers.
Pindar had once told Meric that the savages tied men down in rooms filled with woodland creatures. The animals would nibble on the victim–death from a thousand tiny bites. Perhaps waiting hadn’t been so bad after all. Meric gritted his teeth. He braced himself as … Diodorus freed his wrists and threw him a shirt.
“It’s warm out, but you might want that. Wouldn’t want people to mistake you for a savage,” Diodorus said, smirking. “This is Nog.”
The savage grunted, put a fist to his heart briefly, and opened his palm.
Meric eyed them, holding the shirt. He glanced at the squirrel.
“I believe he’s afraid of your pet, Nog,” Diodorus said.
“Should be. Mobius is a real lion-killer. But I heard you were a fearsome thing yourself, boy. Slew a dozen men, they say. That true?” Nog asked.
Warily, Meric donned the shirt, pushing up the long sleeves, saying nothing.
“He’s not one for long conversation,” Diodorus said. He tied Meric’s wrists together, then set about freeing his ankles from the metal bed. Meric didn’t struggle. He’d only have one good chance to escape, and this wasn’t it.
“I was there, you know. At Jarl’s Ravine. Didn’t see you dance ‘til the end though. One of my cousins died on that field. Man named Kale. Mayhaps it was you who killed him,” Nog said, popping another pecan, eyebrows raised.
“I didn’t happen to catch their names,” Meric said.
Nog snorted.
“I had a graydog pup when I was a boy. Found him in the forest. One day Kale killed a bird with a lucky sling. He was real proud of that shot. But the pup stole the carcass when he wasn’t looking. Kale started slinging stones at him. Couldn’t hit him. So he waited until the pup was asleep, and he stomped on his head. Always was a rotten bastard. I’d almost thank the man who killed him,” Nog said and spat to one side.
“Charming childhood anecdote, but let’s get moving,” Diodorus said.
“Where are you taking me?” Meric asked, keeping the tremor out of his voice.
“Perhaps you’re staying right where you are while the world moves around you. In that case, can it be said you’re going anywhere at all?” Diodorus asked.
“That’s why people hate talking to you. We’re going up,” Nog said.
The men brought him through a long hallway. Angular markings adorned the door behind them. Stairs led upwards. Torches were ensconced on the wall. Three floors above, they emerged from the building at ground-level. Birds sang beneath a faultless blue sky, flitting from tree to tree.
“What’s happening?” Meric asked.
“Life,” said Diodorus.
“Exercise,” Nog said.
Meric looked between them, suspicious. They were high in the mountains. The building from which they’d emerged dated to Pax Americana. There were a few others from the same era, though the savages didn’t appear to live in them. The area was thick with forest. Distant wailing echoed through the trees–a sound of terrible suffering.
Someone’s being tortured.
“Where are you taking me?” Meric asked again.
“Through the village,” Nog said.
“What village?”
Nog looked at him like he was an idiot. He handed his last pecan up to the squirrel.
“Red Oak Grove,” said Diodorus.
All at once Meric saw it: low-ceilinged homes of mud and wood and stone, scattered far and wide, colors melding with the forest; fields of yams, carrots, and cabbage surrounded by brush; low stone walls topped with greenery. Rope-ladders led into the trees, where other dwellings sprawled across thick branches–more, in fact, than were on the ground. Nets were arranged to funnel falling fruit. Rope-bridges ran between the homes in the trees, giving the village a second layer, and a third above that. Meric had never seen anything like it. Dark, stoic eyes stared down at him.
So this is what it’s like to be forsaken by God. To make your home in the mud and trees, like a wild animal. These wretches–do they even know they’re cursed? Plutarchs, help me.
Diodorus led them through the trees. The wailing grew closer. Beneath it, voices were united in a deep-throated chant. Ahead, past a patch of uninterrupted forest, a grove of enormous scarlet oaks cut a vivid red gash in the greenery. The oaks surrounded a small clearing in which a crowd had gathered. Sunlight slanted into the clearing, lending an almost angelic glow–but the proceeding within was decidedly unholy.
In the crowd’s center was a stone slab with a man’s body on top. A figure in a hideous red mask was plunging a blade into the body. Meric’s heart faltered. But they would not break him. He would meet his end praising the Plutarchs. They would know he had stayed faithful, and he would meet his ancestors and friends in Paneden, the City of Light.
“I thought killing captives was forbidden. Where are your lies now?” Meric asked.
Diodorus knotted his brow, halting some distance from the clearing. Mobius clambered down Nog’s side and scampered toward a promising tree.
“You misunderstand,” Diodorus said.
“I understand I’m to be sacrificed to evil spirits in that clearing,” Meric said.
“Oh, right. You understand perfectly then.”
Diodorus laughed. The wailing came again–from a woman in the crowd.
“Fog has got into your brain, boy. Don’t know stone from wood,” Nog said. “That man died in battle. Today they prepare a feast in his honor. Tomorrow they’ll mourn him. Day after that, they will celebrate his life.
“Mourn him? They’re cutting him open, for Fog’s sake,” Meric said.
“Of course. How else could they hold the feast?” Nog asked.
Meric gaped.
“What are you saying, they feast on him? Oh, godsblood, I should’ve known. So this is what passes for ‘honor’ among savages.”
“You’re taking it rather better than I did,” Diodorus said. “You’ve got to understand, every custom has its origin, no matter how bizarre it may seem from the outside. You’re looking at the descendants of a people who lived through the end of civilization. Food and game were scarce in the early years. Couple that with bad luck, ignorance and a lot desperate people, and old practices start reemerging–cannibalism, polygamy, human sacrifice. Only the ghosts of those things remain. The sacrifice is done by effigy, and the cannibalism is limited to funerary rituals. They eat the heart, liver, and kidneys, but never the brain. The heart is the most valued portion. They cremate the rest and cover themselves in the ashes. Some they mix into warpaint for future battles. You may have noticed it when you fought them, though I hear it was pretty dusty. Perhaps it was hard to tell.”
“You weren’t there?” Meric asked absently as the masked figure plunged its hand into the corpse. He was beginning to feel light-headed.
“No. Those of us who stay earn our keep, but Trajan doesn’t send us to fight other Plebians.”
“Right. I forgot, you’re from Panchaea,” Meric said.
Diodorus sighed again. The masked figure placed a clotted liver into a stone basin.
“Sun-madness,” Meric muttered.
“There is no sun-madness, Meric. It’s just another lie to keep you grateful for the Fog.”
Meric opened his mouth to argue … but green eyes caught him through the trees, arresting his will. She was standing beyond the slab, in the front row, wild golden curls catching the sun, naked but for a leather cloth strung about her waist.
They wear no more than the weather calls for.
Gnost had been right about one thing, at least. A layer of gray ash had been smeared over her arms, neck, breasts, and stomach. Intricate patterns had been drawn in the ash. She was wild beyond reason–and utterly captivating. Meric was repulsed by his own fascination.
She’s a savage.
She stood with the solidity of a tree, the stillness of a rock.
&
nbsp; She tried to kill me.
He couldn’t look away.
“This is the sacred grove for which the village is named. Plebians aren’t allowed to enter. Come. We’ll circle around,” Diodorus said.
*
Meric was returned unharmed to the underground chamber in which he’d awoken. His wrists were tied to the metal bed, but the strap was long enough for him to stand or turn around. He couldn’t conceive of Trajan’s purpose in keeping him alive, though he was certain it was part of some nefarious design.
Diodorus had talked more about Panchaea. Meric could almost believe the man had lived there. If so, his presence was a ghastly betrayal. The same went for any other former Plebians. Perhaps some captives weren’t tortured; perhaps they were given the chance to turn traitor instead. No matter what, Meric would remain loyal to the Plutarchs. Wasn’t that the whole purpose of the Wildlands–to test the faithful?
In his dreams, Meric was back at the ravine. Men walked calmly to their deaths, entrails dragging behind. Avigon ripped out his tooth, but the tooth was longer than his hand, and someone stabbed him through the eye with it. Diodorus kept up a running commentary. His words turned to acid and covered everything around him. Meric ran, but the acid spattered his visor, and he couldn’t wipe it away. Then she was there, the girl with grass-green eyes, and her armor was made from ash, and he pinned her to the ground, and the armor fell away–but she was Swan too, she was both women at once, and instead of killing her, he bent his lips to her throat…
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