We Cry for Blood

by Devin Madson

  Even when I woke enough to know myself, I felt too ill to move or call out, too weak. I hadn’t enough strength to fight him, nor enough voice to cry out for Tor, and sank again and again into the strange darkness of my own head.

  Until someone shouted. I couldn’t make out the words, but another cry followed and I lay caught halfway between sleeping and dreaming while other people’s fear washed over me. It seemed to drop into a lull, or maybe I did, until another shout shattered the peace. Running steps spread a widening sphere of panic. Hooves gathered. Sacks were dragged. Tents were rolled and tied. The noise pecked at me incessantly.

  I rolled, trying to get up. The room swam as it had the last time I’d tried to rise from my mat, but this time it was like someone had stuffed my head with wool.

  While the panic mounted outside I struggled upright and sat as best I could with my leg wounds screaming. I made it onto my knees as footsteps approached. “Rah? Rah! You’re awake!”

  A face swam in and out of focus before solidifying into Tor. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” My voice was the dry croak of a dying animal. “Or I would be without Derkka.”

  A frown fluttered over his face at the apprentice’s name. “Derkka?”

  “What’s going on out there?”

  “Gideon’s Swords are on their way. Dishiva must have betrayed us.”

  “Not Dishiva. She wouldn’t,” I said—a mantra of hope more than anything else. Could I have been so mistaken in everyone?

  “Captain Lashak is talking to Whisperer Ezma right now, but Shenyah e’Jaroven was with her and said Dishiva took the position of Defender of the One True God, and… I…” His grip tightened on the holy book in his hand. “There is mention of a defender in here, and it… doesn’t end well. But she was against him. He killed Matsi. If she’s been forced into this I have to warn her what the book says.”

  As he spoke, Tor bustled around the small space gathering things into a sack—food, water skin, gloves, even the holy book, which he wrapped in the dirty remnants of a tunic. “She must have been,” he said more to himself. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  “She could have succumbed to the sickness, like Gideon seems to have.”

  Tor stared at me, his mouth hanging open. “I… don’t even want to contemplate that.”

  “We have to.”

  He drew a breath and let it out in a gust of air. “But if I doubt her… who do I tell about this? While you’ve been sick I’ve been thinking, Rah, what if… what if he’s only being resurrected by his god while he dies the right ways? If he messes one up maybe he’s dead forever.”

  My instinct was to stand up for Leo, to explain as I had to my Swords that he was a priest, not a soldier, that he was only interested in peace, not death, but the words dried like so much sand in my mouth. What a naive fool I had been, tricked by a mild, soft-spoken manner and a gentle smile. Part of me didn’t want to believe it was true, wanted to say there were two sides of every story, but Matsimelar was dead and Dishiva could be in as much trouble as Gideon.

  “You need to go,” I said. “You need to warn Dishiva if you can.” He parted his lips to speak, but I hurried on as a terrible idea occurred to me. “You need the other book. The one Whisperer Ezma has. If you’re quick you can use the panic to get into her hut and steal it and—”

  “Steal from a whisperer? Are you mad?”

  “No. You know I’m not. How many days have I been out?”

  “Two.” Tor looked away. “We didn’t think you’d make it.”

  I gripped his wrist. “There was nothing wrong with me. Derkka forced something down my throat, and I haven’t been properly awake until now. He seems to have forgotten me this time.”

  “He’s scouting out the attack, but… you’re not serious. Why would he—?”

  Hurried footsteps emerged from the noise outside, and I tightened my grip on his arm. “Get the book. Take—”

  The hut darkened as Ezma passed the threshold. She halted a few steps in, not with the look of one brought up short, but of one cynically unsurprised. Guilt coloured Tor’s face. “Well,” she said. “This looks like a pleasant discussion I have interrupted.” Her gaze dropped to the book in Tor’s hand. “You had best hurry out of here, Tor e’Torin. The traitors could be here as soon as night falls, and you don’t want to still be here when they come.”

  “I came to help Rah. He’s better.”

  “How herd-minded of you, Tor. But you needn’t worry, I am here now and I will ensure everyone gets out safely. You must leave with the others.”

  “But—”

  “Now, Tor. We cannot have dithering while an army of traitors rides to destroy us. Go as I have told you.”

  His gaze flicked my way. He licked his lips. And with a sharp little nod, he saluted. “Yes, Whisperer.”

  Tor strode toward the door, his eyes on his feet and his hands clenched upon the holy book. A brief flash of darkness and he was gone, leaving the evening light to spill in with the ongoing noise. Outside, panicked footsteps and shouts had risen to a furore, but I faced the horse whisperer with what calm I could. “You had Derkka drug me. Why?”

  She closed the space between us and, taking a knife from her belt, held it out to me. I stared at the hilt, knowing what it meant.

  I didn’t take it. “I’m invoking kutum,” she said, holding the blade steady.

  I stared at her rather than the blade. “That can only be invoked by a herd master with the support of two-thirds of their matriarchs and patriarchs.”

  “But there are no herd masters here. Only me.”

  “I know, but there should be. Horse whisperers are never leaders; it’s not our way.”

  “It is my way. And you are in the way.”

  “I guess that answers my question.”

  Still I did not take the blade, but rather than force it into my hand she dropped it onto the ground at my feet without breaking eye contact. “Call this my thanks, Rah e’Torin, for showing just how easily Levanti can be led and changed. You can kill yourself or die fighting, whichever suits you best, as long as you die.”

  Ezma stepped back, no hatred in her face as she saluted in farewell, just a genuine look of kindness and thanks that chilled my skin. “Goodbye, Rah.”

  She was gone before I could call her back, and chill fear settled like iron in my bones. Kutum. We only ever invoked it in dire situations, when the fate of the whole herd relied on speed or a frugal spread of food and water. In no other circumstances could a Levanti think of leaving behind the wounded and the sick and the old. The Torin had never needed it in my lifetime, but there had been a terrible famine within the memory of our elders, during which at least a hundred old and infirm Torin had been Farewelled by a horse whisperer, a death ritual performed to end life honourably. The thought of it always made me shudder. Whisperer Jinnit had spoken of it as a sacred rite, but I had silently vowed never to perform it.

  The panic had stilled outside, just a few last desperate dashes around the camp ensuring everyone had what they needed. Except me.

  My legs wobbled beneath me as I climbed my hands one after the other up the door frame, but once I was standing, I wanted nothing more than to sit and never move again. But I was a dead man if I did. Ezma would see to that, even if Gideon’s Swords did not.

  Holding the door frame, I hobbled a step out onto the soft, muddy ground. A few Levanti lingered, some injured and slow, others still packing supplies, while a steady stream of deserters on foot and on horseback departed through a gap in their palisade wall. At the base of the hill, the gates remained closed.

  “Everyone out!” someone was shouting. “Make south for the river. Stay quiet and keep together!”

  A great black horse trotted into view. Ezma sat easily in its saddle, her jawbone headpiece reaching for the grey sky. It barely seemed to wobble atop her head as though it grew from her skull. Derkka followed on an equally grand animal, riding with the same assurance and pride, hi
s circlet of knuckles shiny with wear. A pair of emperors in their own empire.

  Ezma’s gaze slid toward me. I shrank back into the shadows, but her horse slowed enough to make her apprentice look around. His stare fixed on me and a question seemed to hang unanswered, until with a little shake of her head, she urged her horse on. Her apprentice followed and both disappeared through the gap in the wall, leaving a mournful silence in their wake.

  I let go a breath and almost my shaking legs collapsed beneath me. But for the door frame I might have fallen, yet I could not take it with me and I could not stay. Jammed into my belt, Ezma’s knife hung heavy, an ever-present reminder of everything she had said.

  Taking a deep breath, I let go the door and hobbled out into the damp evening, my feet squelching in the mud. Each step was more of a fall, hastily curtailed by another step, and they shuddered their force through me. I could not stop. The momentum pulled me on and I had to keep going until my searing limbs gave up. I fell. Mud splattered into my face and I breathed it in, the stink of it filling me with loathing. For Sett. For Ezma. For Derkka. For this place and its endless rain and most of all for myself and my useless body. I pounded the mud with my fists.

  Another Levanti on horseback and two on foot hurried past. None looked my way, but why should they? During kutum, injured Levanti were dead Levanti, and what was I but a stubborn man who refused to die? Not yet. Not yet, I chanted to myself, looking at the blade of Ezma’s knife bumping against my thigh. She thought me a danger to her plans, but whatever it took, I was going to survive this. Perhaps. I’d made it only half a dozen paces from the door.

  A man in worn leathers hurried toward the gap in the fence. “Amun?” My voice cracked on his name. “Amun!”

  He looked back. Hesitated. Our eyes met, and while I knew what I wished to see in his expression, the distance made such detail impossible. Yet I hoped he might turn, might help me, until with a little shake of the head he turned away.

  “I’m sorry!” I called after him, words I hadn’t been able to say earlier. He flinched as they struck his back as hard as an arrow, but he did not stop and the trees soon swallowed him.

  I let out a shuddering breath and, with shaking arms, lifted myself onto my knees. Damp mud chilled my skin as it seeped through the wool. It felt foul, but I began to crawl, walking both arms forward and dragging my knees to catch up, the effort of moving even short distances enough to make angry tears well in my eyes. And the bump of the blade grew more and more pronounced, like a voice becoming ever stronger. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.

  But I did not want to die. I would rather jam the tip in Ezma’s neck than my own.

  I reached the gap in the wall as the sun slipped into the trees. My knees stung from cuts and scrapes, and because things could always get worse, it began to rain. Just a light, teasing drizzle, but I had spent enough time in this wretched place to know it was merely the prelude to a downpour. At least in the rain I would be harder to see, making my slow escape through the marsh like a dying animal.

  I felt like one, fatigue setting in before I had made it farther than a few lengths into the trees, followed by the first gnawings of starvation.

  I’m here. I’m here. I’m here, said the knife, hitting my thigh. You could end this now.

  Chill wind rushed through the trees, bringing a squall of rain to pepper my back, all sounds of life disappearing beneath its whistle and the ferocious snap of leaves overhead.

  Night crept through the sodden forest, throwing long shadows, and as they began to blur into darkness, I could only continue straight and hope. For what? To find the Levanti who had deserted me? To find Kisians? To somehow find food and water and a place to survive the inevitable winter? I wasn’t supposed to be eking out an existence, I was supposed to be fighting, supposed to be saving my people. Saving Gideon. As he had once saved me.

  “I will not die,” I hissed to the drizzle, and gripping the nearest tree for support, I pulled myself upright. Mud smeared the front of my tunic and my pant legs, weighing me down. “I will not die.”

  In the last of the light there was no sign of life. All I could do was keep following the hoof marks and hope.

  Shifting my hand from tree to tree, I limped a little way on until my legs cramped and I fell, hissing, back into the mud. “Fucking stupid place,” I spat through gritted teeth as I tried to loosen the spasming muscles. “Fucking—” I gasped and hissed and tried to breathe, to focus, but the cramping was like animals gnawing on my flesh.

  Eventually it loosened and I lay, chest heaving, on the ground, too afraid to move lest it happen again but knowing I must. Any search from the camp would spread this far and farther, and I needed to keep moving. But I didn’t. I lay staring at the cloud-covered night, mouth open to catch the cool rain, and thought of the blade Ezma had given me. Rain spattered into my eyes. Animals made small noises in the undergrowth. And still I did not move. It would be so much easier to die, but every time I thought of drawing the blade, I hit a nugget of iron in my soul, a truth harder than any fear.

  I did not want to die. Especially not for her.

  With a grunt of effort, I rolled over, elbows sinking into the mire, and kept going.

  A shout sounded in the distance. It could have been a distressed animal, but my heart raced and it came again. The deep voices of men calling to one another through the trees. Hoofbeats vibrated through the ground, and I sped my pace away from them.

  Gideon’s Swords had come.

  Hands, knees. Hands, knees. Hands, knees. The fabric of my breeches had torn and warm blood seeped out, but I crawled on, too afraid of what would happen if they caught me.

  Now with every bump of the blade against my leg, I changed my mantra.

  I will not die. I will not die. I will not die.

  The shouts drew closer. Footsteps thudded through the trees. A call—Kisian. A reply in the same tongue returned before Levanti words stained the night. “More tracks,” someone said. “And here.”

  “Some here too. Looks like they were dragging something. Hey, those idiots are just walking all over them. Stop walking on the tracks!”

  A flash of light made grey shadows of everything, leaving my eyes to readjust and my hands to hunt the muddy hoofprints. They were becoming sludgy pools. If I went downhill much farther I might find myself swimming in bog water, but there was no going back with so many lanterns flashing between the trees.

  “More tracks! They definitely went this way, or at least some of them did.”

  I stilled while they drew nearer, but they turned and seemed to be moving away so I crawled on.

  Another shout had me freeze, holding my breath and lying low. Mud smeared the side of my face as I listened. Kisian. Two voices. Three. Footsteps, and the creak of a lantern handle. Did they even understand why they were hunting their emperor’s people? Or maybe after all we’d done, they no longer needed a reason to want us dead.

  Low talk approached. I dared not move, but there hadn’t been time to shift into the trees, and any swing of a lantern could find me. The footsteps drew closer. I could not keep holding my breath and let it go slowly, chest aching from the effort and the cold that cut into me like knives. More low words. The clink of buckles. The footsteps stopped. Turned. Light gleamed off the mud.

  I closed my eyes, breath ragged. Boots sank into the mire beside my head. Something jabbed me in the back, and I could not keep the gasp of shock from my lips. A shout, Kisian words sent hollering through the trees. I winced as a hand gripped my shoulder and rolled me over.

  The tip of a thin blade hovered before my eyes, the Kisian face above it lit by an upheld lantern. More footsteps approached. And before I could do more than think about using the knife in my belt, more faces appeared. The first Levanti sneered. “Well, if it isn’t Rah e’Torin,” he said, and catching my name, the Kisians repeated it like an echo—e’Torin, e’Torin, e’Torin, until it faded into the night. “The emperor will be very pleased to see you after what you did
. You’re going to be torn apart. Although it looks like someone started the job for us.” The unknown Levanti gestured at my wounds, while the Kisians milled around like a flock of viciously armed owls, their eyes gleaming in the lantern light.

  “Arron!” someone called as they approached. “Is it really him?”

  Another head popped into view. For a moment she stared down at me, then laughed. Her face was vaguely familiar, but I knew neither of them, nor the third Levanti who came to stand over me. “Well, won’t His Majesty be happy with us.”

  The one called Arron agreed. “A reward, perhaps, for finally bringing in the enemy.”

  “The enemy?” I croaked. “The Chiltaens are our enemies. The city states are our enemies. What does it say about your emperor that his greatest enemy is someone trying to hold on to our traditions?”

  “You killed Sett.”

  “For cheating during a challenge!” I tried to rise, hot with anger, but the blade swung before my face and I fell back. “He threw aside all honour.”

  Arron spat, the wet glob hitting my cheek. “He did what he needed to be rid of you. That is real service. Real honour.”

  The spit ran down the side of my face as I stared up at features twisted into a hatred so strong it stank. “Is that what you learned at your herd master’s feet? Is that what your matriarchs bade you uphold? Other Levanti have never been our enemies. We—”

  A boot jammed hard into my side and I coughed up pain, vision sparkling.

  “Your time for talking is done,” he said. “As will be your time for living. Get him up on my horse and we’ll head for camp. Let the others hunt for the rest.”

  They gripped my arms and hauled me up. I could have gotten to my feet, but there was petty joy in making them lift a dead weight.

  Nearby, a Kisian shout rose over the trees. The Levanti ignored it, but the Kisians pointed the direction I had come. Rapid words, broken off as the same shout came again, like an impatient order, sending them all off at high speed.

  “Hey, come back!” Arron called after the retreating lanterns. “Where the fuck you think you’re going?”