Embers of Empire

by Michaela Strauther

  The creature was picking up pace. Julian moved backward faster. “Are you ready?”

  Her heartbeat quickened from the anticipation, and her breathing was gaining as much speed as the Beastman. “Yes.” She gripped the knife tighter in her hand.

  “Go!”

  She turned around and ran. Julian was right beside her, going slower to keep in time with her. Behind them, the Beastman was running too, and though she couldn’t see it, she could hear the thump each foot made when it hit the ground. She pushed harder, leaping over fallen logs and circling around tree trunks, ignoring the way her lungs burned from the smoke building around her. Through that smoke, she saw the other edge of the woods. They were approaching it quickly, but not quick enough to outrun the Beastman. Its thumps were louder—closer—and she could smell it, a mixture of fire and unwashed body.

  “We’re going to have to split up soon.” Julian ducked under a low branch.

  “Give me the word.” Sathryn’s voice came out dry again.

  They ran together until the beast was right behind them, leaping over logs and ducking under branches mere seconds after they did. Right before they reached the edge, Julian shouted, “Now!” and Sathryn ran to the left.

  The beast wasn’t behind her. She no longer felt the heat of its presence or smelled its rank odor, but that meant Julian still could.

  As if on cue, Julian ran from the thicket of trees and into the open air where there wasn’t much to hide behind. Julian ran straight for a while, and then pivoted right—left—right—left, throwing the beast off. That gave Julian just enough time to pull the knife from his boot and slash the Beastman across his chest.

  The creature slowed for a second, but the skin over the wound quickly mended itself together, healing as if nothing had torn its surface.

  Out of breath and heaving through a sore throat, Sathryn sprinted as fast as she could toward the beast and, like Julian said, threw herself at it from behind. She hung on to the fur on its back, ignoring the heavy smell that radiated from the creature’s body.

  The creature slowed to a stop. Forgetting Julian entirely, it instead groped at its skin with its own claws as it reached for Sathryn. Whenever he scratched at himself, his skin sparked red. She stabbed his head, right through the center, before leaping from its back.

  The beast twitched and swayed as if he was going to fall. Blood leaked from the gash on its head, but the wound must have healed as quickly as it was inflicted, because no more than a few seconds later, the Beastman shook himself to cognizance again, looking around for someone to grab.

  Julian moved beside Sathryn, curled into a crouched position.

  “If he cuts himself with his own claws, he catches fire,” Sathryn said. “Maybe we can get him to attack himself.”

  Julian didn’t look at her—still staring at the beast—but she saw him smiling. He grabbed an arrow from his quiver and notched it into the bow.

  As the beast whirled around, focusing its eyes on Sathryn and starting toward her, Julian shot the bow into his knee. The beast didn’t seem harmed, but when he leaned forward to pull out the arrow, his claws scraped at is skin, catching it on fire.

  The beast stopped, stared down at its leg, and ran faster toward them both. Julian let another arrow fly, this time right in the Beastman’s chest.

  His large hands grasped at that one too. Each time a claw punctured the skin, a fire ignited and never burned out.

  Arrows flew into its back, neck, face, and arms until the Beastman was completely enveloped in flame. Julian and Sathryn, both crouched away from the Beastman, watched as it fell to the ground, reduced to as much of a pile of ash as the homes and trees it had just destroyed.

  Julian stood and smiled. “That was fantastic.”

  But Sathryn had already stood and was wandering to the other end of the clearing. Julian ran to catch up with her, but she didn’t stop until she saw what was left of the camp, the remaining Beastmen nowhere to be found.

  Everything was blackened. What only a few hours ago had held throngs of people mulling about held nothing now but a few survivors, picking through the wreckage for food or water or other people.

  “Etzimek!” Sathryn shouted—or, at least, she tried shouting. Her voice was still raw. “Etzimek!”

  “Etzimek!” Julian’s hands cupped around his mouth. “Etzimek!” His voice carried much louder than hers, and though many people looked up, none of them answered.

  Sathryn ran back toward the camp, her lungs still burning like fire, but hadn’t gotten more than a few yards before she felt Julian’s hands wrapping around her torso, drawing her back. “Let go!” she shouted at him. His arms stayed wrapped around her.

  “What are you—”

  “I have to find Etzimek—”

  “Sathryn—”

  “Let—me—go!”

  “Sathryn!” He hauled himself to the ground, pulling her down with him. She beat against his arms, his torso, but he wouldn’t let go of her until her breathing slowed and her body stilled. “Are you calm now?”

  Sathryn wasn’t so much calm as she was exhausted. Despite the cold, she was sweating. “We have to—go—find Etzimek.” She lay back against Julian’s chest.

  “No, we have to leave.”

  She pulled herself off him and sat on the ground. She couldn’t even look at him. “What do you mean, leave? He trusted you. He is going to come back. He’s out there somewhere—”

  “Sathryn.” He sounded heartbroken. “He could have been taken—”

  “You don’t know that!”

  “They’ll be back, Sathryn.” He slung his bag over his back again. “The Beastmen never hit a region only once. They’re trying to destroy this place, make it uninhabitable. They came this time to take your mother, but they’ll be back, and they’ll bring more of them. We need to be gone long before they get here.”

  “We?” Sathryn glared at him. “We are not going anywhere.”

  “Why not? Would you rather stay here?” He gestured around himself, indicating the barren, blackened land around them. “You would rather take your chances in a black wasteland—nothing to eat, nothing to drink, no one to help you—than come with me? Look, I know you don’t trust me, but it’s either come with me or die of starvation and cold weather.”

  Sathryn didn’t reply for a while. She was busy staring at the people left at the camp, throwing ice and snow onto the fires. “Where are you going?”

  He didn’t reply.

  By the time she looked back up, she couldn’t see him, and panicked for a split second before spotting him at the foot of the small mountain, readying himself to climb. She stood, then ran after him despite the pain in her legs, scared of being left behind.

  He must’ve heard her, because he turned around. “I thought you wanted to stay.” His voice was flat.

  “Just give me a second to rest.” She sat in the cold, dry dirt where the snow had melted a long time ago.

  He sat beside her and pulled out a map. “We need to start moving before nightfall.”

  “Then it’s a good thing it’s only morning.” She looked up at the sky. Regardless of the smoke and fires on the land, the sky was clear blue.

  or the second time, Sathryn was climbing the mountain.

  Julian called it The Jester.

  “It tricks you.” Julian stabbed a long staff into the ground as a walking stick. He’d given her one too, one he pulled from his bottomless pack. “Hidden crevices and whatnot.” The sheath at his belt, long enough for a sword, clanked against the icy rock faces every time he bent to climb a steep angle.

  She didn’t respond, but she was content to just listen to him talk. Her anger had died down for now, and listening to him talk about things—everything from his father to dragons to his servants to The Jester—took her mind from what she needed to worry about. And it did the same for Julian. He had to have been wondering what happened to his giant black home, his servants—Jesel, Tai, Evera. Every time he said something that r
elated to them, he would stop, sigh, and then switch to another topic.

  “I have climbed it before.” Julian leapt over a pit of snow. “A year ago, just for fun. Course, it was much easier then. Now, I have this bag on my back and smoke burning my eyes and snow slicking my shoes . . .”

  “Where are we going?” asked Sathryn.

  “Kingsland.”

  “Isn’t that where the kings live?”

  He nodded, jerking his staff from where it was stuck in ice. “It is.”

  “Please don’t tell me you are going to kill them already.”

  He didn’t reply at first, but stopped hiking up the mountain. He leaned against the staff and glanced over at her. “Well this wasn’t my original plan.”

  Sathryn rolled her eyes, stopping beside him. “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged. “I wanted to leave a few days from now—a week, even. But then those Beastmen attacked, and now, there’s nowhere else for me to go. Besides, I know people up in Kingsland. I used to live there. You can stay with a friend of mine until I kill the kings.”

  “You think you can kill them all by yourself?”

  He looked at her, then climbed again. “Yes, in fact, I do.”

  She hurried after him and tried not to look incompetent by slipping over ice sheets. “I think your ego is blinding you.”

  He laughed. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because you’re one person.” Sathryn’s voice was improving. “You can’t kill five powerful kings on your own.”

  “I wasn’t planning to be on my own before. Tai and Jesel were going to help—even Evera was going to help. She’s quite good with a sword.” It was the first time he’d addressed them since their hike up the mountain. His voice grew sad. “I had two people in Kingsland that were going to help fight and send me a Velda’s dragon to ride up to Kingsland, but since I’m leaving days before my plan, I’m not sure I have them anymore. I don’t have a choice but to be on my own.”

  Sathryn didn’t know how to fight, or how to wield a sword like that little snake Evera, but she didn’t want to travel all this way to sit back in someone’s home and wait for him to save the world. “I can go with you.”

  “Can you throw knives?”

  “No.”

  “Shoot arrows?”

  “No.”

  “Wield a sword?”

  “Maybe.” How hard could it be?

  He stopped to look at her again. “Then why would I want you to come? You need to stay with that friend I told you about. Let me fight the kings.”

  She took advantage of his paused stance and hurried to catch up with him. “I don’t want to walk all the way to Kingsland just to stay behind. My father’s in there somewhere. And I wish you would stop speaking to me like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I’m a child.” He laughed again, and it made her angrier. “Quiet! I know what I’m doing. My father is up there in prison!”

  “And you’re going to save him?” Julian mocked her.

  “I’m not the one who thinks he can kill five kings all by himself,” she shot back.

  When she passed him, he moved again. “Hey, wait—I was only teasing.”

  “Yeah,” she muttered. “I know. But I’m not in the teasing mood right now.” She thought about Etzimek and her mother. “Everyone is gone. Those kings have taken my entire family, and you just want to joke around. Can’t you take anything seriously for once? The only things you seem to care about are things regarding you. Your mother. Your teeth. Your father—” She tripped over a rock but caught herself before she fell.

  Julian passed her this time and didn’t look back. “If I didn’t care about you, I would have left you for dead at the bottom of this mountain.” He said it so softly that she thought she’d imagined it.

  It wasn’t until nightfall, and they’d found a cave nestled in the side of the mountain, that either of them spoke, a fire (that Julian had built and lit with a fire striker and flint) blazing between them. Prior to that, not a word was exchanged.

  Sathryn had kept behind Julian. He had the map, and he, presumably, knew where he was going. If ever Julian stopped, whether to eat or drink water or rest for a minute, Sathryn stopped with him. Julian would toss her an apple or a canteen of water, but no words were spoken.

  Julian lay with his head against his bag.

  Sathryn spoke first. The silence was killing her. “Sorry.”

  He didn’t speak for so long that she just assumed he was sleeping. But when she glanced over at him, he was wide awake and staring right back at her.

  “I said—”

  “I heard you.” His voice was deep with exhaustion. “I just don’t know why you’re apologizing.”

  He must have been teasing her again. She sighed and inched closer to the fire as the wind from outside picked up. “For being . . . difficult.”

  He smiled but said nothing.

  “I think you owe me an apology too.”

  “For what?” He sat up and dug around in his bag, this time drawing out two small pouches. He slid one toward her. Inside were small slices of a dried plum, a few handfuls of almonds, and a semihardened piece of bread wrapped in cloth.

  She took a bite of the plum. “For being facetious.”

  Julian pulled an orange from his own bag and peeled it. “Facetious? What, you don’t like when I tease you?”

  “Not when I’m upset.”

  He nodded, catching her eye from the other end of the fire. “I try to solve my problems with jokes. Sometimes I can’t—like when I talk about my mother, or my teeth, or my father . . .” He quoted her words from earlier with a smile.

  “Sorry about that.”

  “About what? See—I already forgot.”

  Julian finished his orange and scooted closer to the fire, then grabbed a bundle of something from his bag. He tossed it to her—a few shirts and pants. “Do you want me to . . . wear them?”

  He smiled. He was lying back against his bag again and had his eyes closed. “Not unless you wish to. I was giving it to you as a pillow.”

  “Oh.” She shrugged and placed the bundle on the ground. When she lay down, the fire heated her face.

  “I think the proper thing to say is thank you,” he teased.

  She smiled even though he couldn’t see. “Thank you.”

  He pretended to snore.

  When Sathryn woke up, she was freezing.

  The fire was still blazing hot flames—she could tell that much even before her eyes were open—but it only heated the front of her body. Her coat wasn’t doing much, especially since the fire from the Beastmen raid had burned holes through it. Julian had given her pieces of rag and clothing to patch it up, but it wasn’t as thick as the coat itself. When her eyes cracked open, Julian was sitting next to her this time, his hands turning something over the fire. She looked up.

  “Isn’t it great?” Julian was turning a stick. On the stick was an animal of some sort. “A rabbit.”

  Amused and famished, Sathryn sat up and stared into the fire. With Julian sitting so close to her, she could feel his arm and leg against her own. “Did you kill it?”

  “No, of course not. It hopped up here on its own.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Is it almost finished? I’m hungry.”

  He nodded. His face was brighter today, less tired, less drained, and less dirty. He glanced over at her, a question on his face. “What?”

  “Nothing. Your face is clean.”

  He nodded again, pulling the rabbit from over the fire. He had stuck two twigs in the ground on either side of the fire to make a stand for the rabbit. Sliding the rabbit itself from the stick proved more difficult; Julian was trying to pull it off the stick and onto a sheet of rock without burning his fingers.

  “You found this too?” She pointed to the sheet of rock.

  “I did. All while you slept.” He shot her a mocking glare.

  They were eating the rabbit—underseasoned, but she hardly minde
d due to her hunger—and had almost finished when they both heard the shouts from somewhere to the right of their cave. The cave, slightly above the ground on the mountainside, was tucked into the mountain. Julian crawled out from the cave’s interior to crane his head out.

  As soon as he did so, he sucked his head right back in. “What is it?” Sathryn asked, but he whipped his head back around in silence, holding up a single finger to his lips.

  “Quiet,” he said. “It’s the Red Arrows.”

  She crawled up behind him and hunkered down in the shadows, watching. Sure enough, the people riding in—three men and two women, all on horseback—all had dark, black cloaks on, the Red Arrow insignia stitched across the whole front of the coat rather than on the arm, like Sathryn had seen before.

  In front of one of the riders, a tall man with dark skin and hair, was a slumped figure with a black sack over its head. The figure was too obscured by its baggy coat and black sack for Sathryn to see who it was, but the person wasn’t moving.

  One of the horses stopped beside a thin, crooked, leafless tree. One of the women spoke up. “Taz, I think we should stop here. Get some rest, then we can head out again by noon.”

  The man she called Taz, a man with the palest skin Sathryn had ever seen, pulled his horse to a stop ahead of the tree and turned to face the woman. Upon closer inspection of Taz, Sathryn could have sworn it was the same man who had attacked her in the streets, but she couldn’t be sure. If it was the same man, cleaning himself up and making himself look wealthy seemed to be high on his agenda.

  “How many times must I tell you?” Taz began. The others stopped their horses too. “We don’t have time. Those beast things won’t just forget about their little hostage.” He gestured to the body slumped over the dark-skinned man’s horse. “They aren’t very smart, but they’re fast, and I don’t want them to catch us.”