by Danie Ware
She walked now, her heart slowing but its sound still loud in her ears. Her little rocklight was a pool of sanity in the rising dark. Sometimes she heard sounds from above her – shrieks, shouts, rumbles of rubble, once a roar of defiance that sounded like the Protector himself…
Gorinel!
She’d grown very fond of the fat old man in the short time she’d known him. He really did rely on himself, shoulder his own responsibilities – and if the Gods helped those who…
She stopped, her attention distracted by a sudden, sinking horror.
That odd-shaped outcrop that threw a peculiar shadow, she’d passed it before, she was sure… She fought to hold down sudden panic. She was imagining it. This wasn’t some saga-labyrinth for sacrificing maidens to monsters, it was just tunnelling and there were many exits. She was fine. She had her bag of staples over her shoulder. She had the heavy cloak Gorinel had thrown her. She had her good trews on and her sturdy boots – laced-up boots like Redlock’s, like Feren’s had been. There was no need to—
Screams sounded, a distant echo.
Her blood ran cold.
Would the monsters find her, all the way down here? How long would it take them?
Somewhere she’d heard tales of the great mouths that opened in the cliff face, endlessly spitting the Swathe River down into the sea; somewhere else, tales had told of tunnels that stretched all the way to forbidden Rammouthe itself.
All she needed to do was head downwards. All she needed to do was get the rhez out.
Reach Rhan.
And when I’ve done that, I’ll take the moons from the sky and wear them as ear-gems…
But her sense of purpose was strong as the stone that surrounded her, as the weight of the city over her head. And she took a breath and ran on, more slowly now, still carrying her little light.
She passed the outcrop again.
This time she stopped, her heart pounding, fighting for control.
Saint and Goddess – she’d be down here until the end of the Count of Time. Until she was the last free mortal left in the city. Until Vahl’s entire army had surrounded her and the daemon took her as some damned bride…
Shuddering, she exhaled.
Bride indeed!
Amethea had spent far, far too long feeling sorry for herself, all tangled with her own regrets and fears. She’d called Rhan on his selfishness – how she’d even dared! – on his obsession with his city, and now she must damned well face her own. Why would the daemon even want her, for Gods’ sakes? There was no one to blame and no one to help her – she’d broken Amal’s visions, by the Gods, and she could do this.
From somewhere now far, far above, she heard the Protector’s roar again.
And it made her feel strong, strong as the very stone that surrounded her, as the roots of the city herself.
And then, in the echoes of the noise, the tingle she’d felt earlier returned, a shimmer that she knew. She dismissed the outcrop and began to walk, getting her breath back, and her feet…
Stone.
The touch of stone in her skin, in her soul. The blaze of catalytic passion that Maugrim had awoken. The rock that had grown through her very flesh. Touching the walls in the Monument’s tunnels, the strength and age that had lain there, untapped.
A confused rush, guilt and confidence.
And knowledge – all she had to do was go downwards.
Falling to your knees and pleading for Samiel to save a life is one thing – but the dying man beside you needs you to stop his bleeding.
She was going to get out.
* * *
In the rain-soaked storehouse doorway, she stood shivering, and trying to listen.
The cold was bitter after the ambient tunnels, but she chewed her lips and tried to keep still. She’d no idea what had happened to the Cathedral behind her – if she emerged from the doorway and turned to look back up at the city, perhaps she’d see it in flames, see the Palace and the statuary all finally crumbling as Vahl celebrated with some orgy of gleeful destruction…
But she was free, the fresh air had called to her and she had broken into a stumbling run at last, emerged blinking and nearly crying with relief. Now she stayed where she was, cold biting her skin and watching the grey curtain of the rain.
Put your shoulder to the wheel, Amethea, and know that you are not abandoned.
Across the grey, she saw motion – a shadow, barely more than a figment. It was moving slowly, as if hurt, but the dull thud of hooves was unmistakable.
Her heart thundered.
Fixed to the spot as though stuck by an arrow, she waited, every sense straining. The shadow paused, one hoof beating restless, but there was no other motion.
The rider was alone.
Put your shoulder…
Carefully, she eased out into the downpour.
The Gods, apparently, were teasing her.
This was not some lone and injured rider – a free pass, offered by the Goddess for good work, or to reward her returning faith. Oh no, this rider was armed and well and truly awake. He was – had been – a courier, by the look of him; his garments were soaked and sticking to him, his hair pasted to his face. He was pale and shivering, young, but very much alive.
“What do you want?”
As she came close, his voice was loud in the drum-pulse of the rain.
Amethea spat water. “I need help! I need…”
I need you to give me your horse.
Like that was going to work!
She wondered what she was supposed to do. She had any number of fascinating herbal concoctions that would make him give her anything she wanted… but she didn’t have them out here. All she had was her wit and the blade at her belt.
“I need… help… I…”
Honest by nature, Amethea wasn’t a good dissembler. But the lad swung a leg over the saddle pommel and came towards her, his mount stopping to nose the overgrown flags.
“What’s the matter?” He stopped a short distance from her, wary. “What’s wrong?”
“I need… ah… I’ve got a message for Ythalla. I must get to her.”
Something in his stance felt like relief – like she’d spoken some password that made him trust her. Her mind said, He’s an enemy, but she shook the notion away – there was no such thing, he was a man doing a job and no more.
The blade at her belt was heavy, dragging at her like a bad decision.
She might have trained with it, but the thought of using it on flesh turned her stomach.
Have you saved a life, little lady? Have you taken a life?
In the rain, she heard the stallion’s laughter, cadaverous and deep. Her hand found the haft and tightened.
The courier said, “I can take you. To Ythalla. I can…”
“I can’t walk. I need… help…” She was repeating herself and felt ridiculous. Who would fall for this ruse, really?
“Or I can take the message for you.” The boy wasn’t coming any closer.
“It’s important. I have to take it personally. Please! You need to help me up!”
Her knees were folding, that much was true.
The Gods help those who…
The horse was grazing on something, shaking the water from its mane. Glancing briefly back at it, the boy came closer, blowing the rain from his mouth and nose. Snot slicked his cheek. He was barely more than a lad, his voice just changed.
Her hand tightened further, a gesture that was more denial than threat.
She stretched the other one towards him – a ludicrous and theatrical motion.
“Please!”
But as he saw her properly, he relaxed – apparently convinced that something that little and pale and pretty couldn’t be a threat. She felt the tension leave him.
She said again, softer, “Please!”
Redlock, in The Wanderer, when she’d refused to kill Maugrim: Keep it that way.
The boy caught her outstretched hand, hauled her to her feet. She didn’t ha
ve to pretend to stagger – she nearly threw up. As she gulped air and rain, calming her belly, the horse raised its head to look at both of them, ears pricked forward.
As if it knew exactly what was about to happen.
The boy turned to it, talking softly.
His back was to her.
She had a moment, a moment only. A moment that would change who she was, how she saw the world. A moment in which she pulled the blade from her belt, feeling it heavy in her hand as if the very terhnwood had become metallic and cold.
You don’t have a choice!
And then, watching herself with a strange, slow motion that felt absolutely unreal, she turned her grip on the thing and whacked the back of his skull with the pommel.
As hard as she could.
The horse flared its nostrils and threw its head back, its tack clacking.
She knew exactly where to strike – the boy fell like a sack and didn’t move again.
Feeling sick, Amethea blinked at him for a moment, her hands shaking. Then she swallowed a mouthful of saliva, dropped the blade, and knelt, staring. She went to check his pulse – stopped herself.
The horse snorted again, and she picked up the boy’s kit-bag, stood to catch the animal’s rein.
She stroked its neck, talking softly.
And that, she told the Gods, is helping my damned self.
15: TUSIEN
THE NORTHERN VARCHINDE
And somehow, the attack made it all real.
There was no time now for indecision, for thoughts of desertion or unrest; their enemy brought them fear, and their fear brought them unity. They pulled together, closed against both foe and winter, and the drums beat relentless in the morning.
Our city is gone, the rhythm said. Our Lord is gone. Our homes are gone. And those we loved.
The vialer had killed thirty-one soldiers; thirty-one men and women had died down there in the cold and the muck and the darkness. A further twelve had serious injuries and were unable to be moved. Apothecarial care was limited – and came with some hard choices.
Newcomer to the army though she was, Amethea knew what those choices were likely to be.
Wrapped tight against the grey and bitter cold, her stolen mount in the hands of the supplymaster, she refused both herbal and rest, and went to find what passed as the hospice. As the camp packed up about her and orders puffed like vapour through the dawn, she found the bivouac where the injured had been gathered. They were huddled on pallets on a cold, frosted floor, their faces pale with inevitability.
Eleven of them had been badly physically hurt. The twelfth had no visible marks at all. He was hunched and rocking, his chin streaked with blood where he’d bitten through his lower lip.
Amethea understood all too well – not all harm was physical. She may not be able to call the Gods for miracles, but if she could save one mind, one life, it would be enough. Gorinel had told her: faith was in action, her shoulder to the wheel, and now, she knew her path exactly.
Outside, the soldiers formed into their tans and flags, upright and shivering. Their collective breath plumed over them, dawn mist. They stood in silence, in tribute to those they’d lost – their pennons fluttered like discovered pride. But then the commands rang loud and the damned drums began yet again, merciless and blood-pounding. Goaded by the sound, the skirmishers began to stretch and jump, and the horses shifted, stamping their hooves.
Turning back to the dim and stinking interior of the tent, she knew she had little time.
“Amethea.”
The voice behind her was quiet, very deep. Startled, she turned back to the lifted tent flap.
Rhan himself ducked in under the low fabric, blocking the sullen sky. He was grey-faced, dirty and bloodied. In places, his armour was split and filthy, rent to the padding.
He said, “I’ve come to help you.”
Wary, Amethea eyed him. “Help me do what?” If he’d come to slit throats, then she was…
But he shook his head, too tired to fight, and pointed at the young man closest to the doorway whose belly wound had him curling in sweat and anguish, hands across himself as if to hold his guts in. His garments had been cut away from the injury and the wound had been briefly dressed, but the dressing was blood-soaked, darkening like a new bruise. In the poor rocklight, his skin was leeched of all colour and shards of pain were caught between his teeth.
Even if she stopped the bleeding and dressed the wound correctly, the danger of infection was severe. The Count of Time would come for this one, and soon.
Rhan said, “There’s no ceremony to this, and no time to delay.” He met her gaze and she was surprised how serious he looked – and how old. “Amethea. Do you trust me?”
The wind gusted, made the fabric fold of the doorway slide down over itself. He turned and caught it, threw it back.
She said, “I—?”
“Do you trust me?”
“I… Of course.”
She watched him kneel at the pallet-side of the injured man. When the man realised who he was, he tried to sit up, speak.
“Lie down.” Rhan laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’ve come to help you.”
He peeled back the dressing, baring the wound to the rocklight. The wound had stitches, but they were fast, torn and ragged. She could almost see the infection eating at their edges. As she watched, Rhan laid a hand over the injury.
“What are you doing?” she whispered. Across the bivouac, others craned to look. The uninjured man cried aloud, formless and without words.
Rhan’s face flickered a frown, and then, carefully, he took his hand away.
And Amethea gaped.
Saint and Goddess!
The wound had gone. It was an angry, puckered scar, ends of fibrous stitches still peeking curiously from it. Across the young man’s abs, a jagged red lightning mark now decorated his skin. He stared at Rhan for a moment, then rubbed his hands across the scar and sat up, stammering and coughing.
Whispers rolled through the tent.
Amethea’s mind reeled after them, looked for something to cling to. She heard the Bard’s fireside story, the Promise of Samiel, she heard Gorinel, Know that you are not abandoned. She remembered Maugrim, attuned to the Powerflux and a wielder of fire – not only of its force, but of its allure, its sense of community, and its warmth.
Heal and Harm. None could learn one…
But this was different. Rhan was stark somehow, vastly more powerful than Maugrim had been. She’d felt his sheer energy like lightning across her skin, felt it reaching into the injured man, crackling into his body as if it sought to illuminate his soul. Pure power had shuddered through the dirty tent, touched Amethea and made the hairs on her arms stand on end…
Promise of Samiel.
You are not abandoned…
She didn’t get time to follow the thought to its end.
“Amethea.” His voice brought her back to herself. From outside, she could hear voices, commands – they were almost out of time.
She found herself asking, “How did you…? How can you…?”
“Not now. Now, we get as many of these people on their feet as we can, find horses for the rest, and then we move before the nasties catch us with our trews down. So, are you going to help me, or are you going to sit back and let me do all the work?” His sardonic tone gave the words a twist of dark humour.
“I thought I might mark you out of ten.” Amethea was impressed with her own aplomb. The healed man was scrambling up now, his face flushed, and the others were starting to call out for help. The uninjured soldier cried again.
The man went to speak, but Rhan stopped him. “If you can walk, then take a message to the commander and tell him…” he paused, “…tell him no man or woman will be left behind. Not while I’m here, and I’ve still got the focus to fight. We’ve lost enough.”
We’ve lost enough.
Amethea stared at him, at a manifest and complex guilt, like an echo of her own. She was lost for anything to
say. He raised an eyebrow at her. “What?”
“If you can do this,” she said, “then you don’t need me here. You don’t need me at all.”
We’ve lost enough.
Outside, the drumming was picking up speed.
“We need you, Amethea,” Rhan told her. “You’re the most experienced apothecary we have – and you’re worth your weight in terhnwood. Now, shall we?”
* * *
They ran.
They ran through winter and weariness; they ran through the dead plain and the deep cold.
By the third day, the increase in pace was beginning to take its toll, and the ground underfoot was becoming harder, scattered with angles of sharp and broken rock.
To the north, now to their right, the hard slope fell slowly away. At its foot was the valley of one of the Swathe River’s many tributaries, and a dense, usually wintergreen woodland.
Mostak had it marked as a place for potential ambush, but as they passed across the top of the slope and carried on southwest, they could see the woodland in the hollow was dead, like everything else. The trees had slumped into grey resignation, fallen one against another, their needles littering the ground.
The river itself was sluggish and rank. The mounted skirmishers ran as far as the banks but reported that the water was tainted, and could not be drunk.
With a collective groan, they ran on.
Towards evening, they saw the first signs of pursuit.
The threat was far away, but as the force broke for a rest, Mostak issued Ecko a new set of orders.
“I need to know all of it,” he said. “How many, how fast. What they’re armed with, what they’re riding. You saw the encampment – tell me how much of it is on the move.”
Hey! Lemme be your fucking intern!
Ecko was knackered, even his sense of humour was outta batteries. Plus, he’d gotten a pretty good idea what was what – if he tuned his telos, he could see the incoming bad guys quite clearly, thanks, horses an’ monsters an’ all. He could answer the commander’s questions without actually having to run that fucking far. Chrissakes, already, he needed a break – he hurt in places he’d forgotten he had. Mom’s trickery just wasn’t designed for this “hut hut hut” shit…
