The Harbinger of Change

by Matthew Travagline

  ◆◆◆

  Dark heavy clouds loomed over the sky as Harvey and one of Gideon’s soldiers, an older teen named Rex, snuck wide around the fortress. Had it been any other time in the decade, he would have been worried about a storm preparing to crash down, but in the winteryear, this dark cloudy vista was normal.

  They each lugged an end of a heavy siege ladder. Harvey felt the strain of the awkward weight burning in his shoulders. The rough grain bit into his hands with all the ferocity of an untrained dog.

  Thus far, his plan had gone smoothly. As they looped far out of range, they met no resistance. It was as he had hoped. The only guard watching the southern desert and wall had tired of his position and moved to another area that promised more of war’s carnal action. So, the two managed to arrive at the wall without being seen.

  “Okay,” he said to Rex. “Now set me up so that the ladder touches below the top of the wall.”

  “But without the anchors over the wall through the arrow slits, it will—”

  “Yes, you’re going to have to press the ladder and keep it from sliding. We can’t risk a guard seeing the it until I’m already up. Only once I’m up there drawing attention, will others have the opportunity to join in the fray.”

  Rex resigned his argument. He and Harvey carefully set the ladder so that it came to rest just two feet under the wall’s lip. “Kick ass.” He offered his hand.

  “Don’t let me fall.” Harvey began ascending the ladder, noting with curiosity how smooth the wall felt to his hands. Three quarters of the ascent came and went without issue, then a guard peeked over the edge and spotted him.

  He grinned, taking his time to sight his rifle on the climbing invader.

  Harvey locked his arms around the ladder’s rungs, expecting the bullet to throw him from his precarious perch along the wall, but after the explosion sounded, he felt no pain. Looking back up, he saw the telltale smoke rising from the barrel and imagined that the man had missed. He continued climbing until he felt the ladder slip, a groan sounding from below.

  Rex had collapsed to the ground, a geyser of blood spewing from his chest.

  Harvey felt the ladder slip more, the snowy sand offering no traction. He pushed his muscles to climb faster. For every two ladder rungs that he climbed, he seemed to lose one in height. In a desperate effort, he reached out near the lip of the wall, his fingers finding rough purchase. He felt the ladder fall away and braced his body for its pendulum swing into the wall.

  Every muscle in his body strained to maintain his hold. He kicked his feet, but the sandblasted-stone walls were smooth and provided little traction. Just as he thought the feat impossible, he heard Freki’s wild laughter fill his ear. Harvey gritted his teeth and pulled up with an unnatural strength.

  Inch by inch, the teen hauled himself up and over the wall’s lip. Once over the top, safe with his back resting against the arrow slits, he closed his eyes and breathed out in relief, feeling the tension and adrenaline seep from his limbs. He would have forgotten his mission entirely had it not been for the acidic smell of sulfur wafting into his nose and a strange rhythmic sound.

  His eyes sprang open to see the barrel of a rifle jammed before his face. Reflexes hijacked his arms, thrusting them out to butt it away. A loud explosion detonated next to his head. He felt a deep tingling in his hands. A trickle of blood dripped down his ear. The sharp sound of a bell rung nonstop, all other sounds abandoning him entirely. Growling, he ripped the rifle from the guard’s hands and smacked it into his opponent’s nose, feeling bone crunch underneath his powerful blow. The guard wobbled, clutching at his bloodied face. Harvey swung the rifle in a wide arc that sent the guard tumbling over the wall to the sand below. The body landed in an awkward heap on the ground. Harvey surveyed his handiwork, then brought his attention back to the seige.

  Clearing the walls proved to be an easier task than he had imagined, though it would have been easier if Rex had been able to secure the ladder and climb up to provide support. Only ten riflemen lined each gated wall, and they each wore a device over their ears, no doubt to protect their hearing. He killed six of them, one at a time, before any of the others thought to look at why their fire rate had decreased. He had snagged ear protection from one of the guards.

  In an effort to thwart the advance, the seventh soldier leapt off the front of the wall in his dying moments alerting his remaining companions. The man’s plan worked, for the next two guards saw, turned, and took aim.

  Harvey jammed his hand under one rifle just before it fired. The protection over his ears ensured that he was not stunned by the nearby gunshot. He pushed the guard back, who, in the process of falling, knocked his partner’s rifle to the ground. It discharged from the fall and the bullet bit into its owner’s neck, drowning the man in his own blood.

  After ensuring that both were dead, he inched over to the final guard on the wall, stopping when he realized that the man stood with his rifle trained on him. Too much space existed between the two for him to try anything to divert the gun.

  Harvey made no sudden movements. His sword seemed to drop of its own accord. And he feared that the man would shoot him dead where he stood.

  The guard’s fingers fidgeted on the worn metal protecting the trigger, but his gaze shifted to the sand below, spotting an advance of Gideon’s men with their own ladders.

  In the moment before the guard’s eyes returned from surveying the force, Harvey had closed the distance between them, his hands redirecting the rifle barrel into the sky.

  Unlike the others, the last guard saved his rifle shot. Though his fingers hovered by the trigger, he waited to gain the advantage in his conflict with Harvey. They struggled for nearly a minute to control the rifle. In a final push, the guard thrust his knee into Harvey’s gut, causing the teen to grimace in pain and fight to bring air into his lungs.

  Before either could retaliate, the gun shot. As Harvey was holding the barrel, his hands shook from the explosion.

  The guard was premature in firing. The bullet exploded on the left side of his face, tearing skin, incinerating muscle, and splintering bone as it trudged through his head. He collapsed to the ground, dead.

  Harvey stood tall, allowing his body to revert to some level of equilibrium. He slipped the earmuffs from his head. After wiping the spoils of carnage from his face, he waved Gideon’s army onward. Within minutes, they had commandeered the wall and progressed along the perimeter, clearing the opposing wall of its riflemen.

  Out of orders, he retrieved his sword and descended into the fortress, looking for Cleo and Roy. He spotted a building that seemed devoid of activity and decided to peek inside. When his eyes acclimated to the darkness and he saw Gnochi laying in a peaceful sleep on a cot, he felt his knees weaken. Harvey edged over to the bard but found him unresponsive and cold.

  “I’m afraid there was nothing I could do for him,” a voice said, sounding calm.

  Harvey tensed, drawing his sword. “Show yourself,” he barked. From behind a wall, he watched a shadow of a man ease into the room with the grace of a ghost. In the light, He saw the man to be wearing a thin cloak that had once been dark but now lay sun-stained and sand-torn. “Remove the hood.”

  The face resembled everyone Harvey had ever known, yet no-one at all. When he looked to the man’s face, he saw soft features and eyes, silver like the moon on still water.

  “You must be Harvey. I’ve heard much about your travels with my blade, there.” The man smiled, gesturing to Gnochi.

  “You coerced him to work! You kidnapped his family. Held them for ransom unless he did your dirty-work.”

  “There you are wrong. Partially wrong. I never touched a hair on the heads of his family. They were dead, long before our negotiations. I can understand if Gnochi, out of embarrassment, might want to fabricate some farce, but such a tale is gratuitous at best.”

  “You’re Jackal?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re coming to get you.”

 
; “Who? Gideon’s pathetic army? I’ve got technology on my side. My men wield power. And really, Harvey. Of all people to support in this tiresome war, the last person I’d expect you to support is the Luddite army. I mean, you saw how they killed that boy in Pike’s Cathedral. They have no regard for human life.”

  Harvey gritted his teeth. “I’m not here supporting any army. I’m here for my friends. For Cleo and Roy. For Gnochi.”

  “You’re too late to save the bard.”

  “I can take him out of here. We can leave right now and—”

  “Don’t you get it? He’s not sick. Gnochi is dead. There is no saving him.” Jackal gestured for Harvey to confirm his words. The leader of Silentore made no move to leave as Harvey felt for a pulse and watched for the rise and fall of breathing lungs.

  “You killed him!” Harvey advanced on Jackal, fitting his blade snug in the hollow of his throat.

  The Silentorian seemed to expect the response. His gaze held no fear, though the blade lay close enough to shave the whiskers from his neck. “We found his dying body several miles to the north. Gnochi had already suffered from Tundra Fever. By the time my people brought him in, his pulse was fading. Artful, yet scarce as the last butterfly before a winter’s frost.”

  “No! You lie.” Tears blurred Harvey’s vision. “He had a horse. He was a smart man. He wouldn’t have let himself die.” He dropped his arm, not caring when the tip of the blade scraped against the ground.

  “We found no horse near his person, I’m afraid, and the snows had shifted, concealing any footsteps, so if he was on a horse, it was long gone. And you must know that Tundra Fever kills indiscriminately. It takes lives smart or naught. Gnochi had little chance.”

  “You’re still responsible.” Harvey wiped the tears from his cheeks. “You’re the reason he was in this predicament. Forced him to kill.”

  “Even against insurmountable odds, we still have free will. The choice to make our own decisions.”

  “Not when the alternative is death. Gnochi wouldn’t doom his family to death if he could have a say.” Harvey blinked back tears, but he kept seeing Kiren’s stern gaze in the darkness of his eyelids. He remembered the sting of her hand on his cheek and her words in his ears. “And what choice did I have? As far as I knew, everyone had died. It was Roy and I against the world. We were supposed to throw away our lives to support a cause we thought was dead?”

  “Ah. This is about the woman. Kiren, is it? A pretty thing. So much ferocity. Yet, like everyone else, she ultimately proved no obstacle for my echoer.”

  “What did you do to her?” Stoked by the comment, Harvey made to swipe at the Silentorian’s throat, but the man unsheathed a blade from a hidden place under his robe and parried the blow. The clang of steel cemented him in his bloodlust.

  “I’ll have to introduce you to a prisoner of mine. He has a rather peculiar echo that allows him to enter the minds of those he touches and manipulate their memories.”

  “That’s how you got Gnochi to—”

  “I promise you,” Jackal said, smiling as he deflected Harvey’s assaults. “I did nothing to your image in her head. Any tarnish on your memory is your blame alone.”

  “I’ll kill you,” Harvey roared.

  “I doubt it,” Jackal answered. His face remained expressionless. The exertions seemed not to affect him in the least, though Harvey was sweating from the assault. “I’ve hardly been trying. Why not spar words with me instead of swords? It’ll still land me the victor, but won’t result in the spilling of unnecessary blood.”

  Harvey leapt back as if suddenly understanding that he was outmatched. He favored a cut parallel with his ribs. “It doesn’t matter if you kill me now,” he said. “You’ve already lost.”

  Jackal resumed his own volley of slashing. “You stall for time.”

  “How do you think I came to be in here? I scaled your walls and killed half the men atop myself. By now, Gideon will be marching the remainder of your men to their graves.”

  Jackal attacked with a renewed vigor that resembled anger. Taut muscles rippled under his cloak.

  Harvey felt his own strength waning. He knew that he would not be able to hold off the assassin much longer. The sound of shuffling feet outside the door drew both combatants’ attentions. In that instant, Harvey moved, unguided in his strike. His blade sunk, hilt-deep, into Jackal’s gut.

  The assassin looked down at the protruding sword, shock painted on his face. A stream of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. His sword fell, clattering on the ground, and his lips parted, moving as if to speak. “Ta-Ta,” he whispered.

  “What?” Harvey asked. He leaned in, angling his ear next to Jackal’s mouth.

  “Turn it. Make the end come quicker.”

  Jackal’s words spoke of a mercy unlike any he had shown with Gnochi, and, as Harvey imagined, many others. He could not risk Gideon contriving a reason to save the assassin, so he twisted the hilt. A feral squelch of ripping entrails kissed his ears; a thick odor of blood and bile filled his nostrils.

  Harvey ripped the blade free in an arced swipe. A slurry of blood and bile splayed out as if it were an extension of the blade, painting the walls, floors, and Gnochi, in blood droplets. He dropped the blade and rushed over to where his friend lay. As he pawed at the bard’s neck, feeling for a pulse, he saw one lone bead of red blood dripping down his cheek. He rubbed at the blood, but it had already trickled down Gnochi’s temple, hiding within in his unruly hair.

  Chapter 40

  Assured that his friends, when found, would be led back safely, Harvey decided to carry Gnochi’s corpse back to Gideon’s camp, though at the border, one of the guards tried to force his friend into a mass pyre. Harvey nearly bit the guard’s nose off, his response was so sharp. Finally, he stumbled into Gnochi’s small section of the tent, though not foretold by any owned items. He placed the bard on his cot and stared at him for a time.

  The worry was gone from his forehead. He no longer wore fear and tension on his eyes and lips.

  “At least you’re with that family of yours,” Harvey said, pulling a plain blanket up over Gnochi’s body. “I’d have said that you have some here who still need you to look after them.” He felt hot tears leak from his eyes. Wiping them off with dirty hands, He inadvertently spread a mixture of sand and blood across his cheeks.

  The squeal of an infant approaching the tent roused him from his grief. He covered Gnochi’s face, then stood and scratched at his eyes and cheeks. Taking a large gulp of the warmed air, he exited the room.

  Cleo cuddled the fussy infant in her arms to soothe it, but it was unappeased. Behind her, Roy seemed to be favoring a bandage on his leg, but he allowed a woman to lean on him for support. She looked familiar, though in the dim light of the tent, he did not immediately recognize her. “Kiren?” At Harvey’s words, she limped across to his waiting arms.

  “I’m sorry, Harv,” she whispered in his ear.

  After a minute, the two broke apart their hug. Harvey looked to his friends and smiled. “It’s good to see you all back in one piece, though you nearly killed me, you know. I thought they had captured you after you decided not to come back up through the tunnel.”

  “I wanted to go back,” Roy said. “Once the shooting started, the door at the end of the tunnel was left unlocked. I know we should’ve come back, but we saw an opportunity and took it.”

  “And who is this?” Harvey asked, taking the squirming baby from Cleo’s untrained arms. He cooed the baby, rocking it with ease. At Cleo’s agape mouth, he said, “Some came to us as infants with no one else to take them in.”

  “It’s Gnochi’s baby,” Kiren said. Harvey glanced at her, though more from concern than naught. “It’s true. Where I was imprisoned, there was a pregnant woman in my same cell. She wasn’t nearly due, but the baby came. The mother. She didn’t last too long after he was born. But she told me that the father was a man named Gnochi and that I was to bring this one to him.”

 
“Iris,” Cleo explained. “She was one of the people walking through our menagerie when we were camped at Urtin.”

  “Oh,” Harvey said, edging around the conversation without placing a foot in.

  “But she also saved him, so I’m eternally grateful to her,” Cleo admitted.

  “How so?” Roy asked.

  “She indirectly told me how to kill off his infection. To use bone-flower.”

  Harvey nodded, as if appreciating the late woman’s efforts. “So, what is going to happen to the baby?” He asked, then winced at his words.

  “Gnochi and I will care for him,” Cleo said. “He may not like it at first, but I can convince him. Besides, this is his son.”

  Roy took the baby and backed up.

  “Cleo,” Harvey began, his voice thick with forlorn. “Gnochi.”

  “What? Isn’t he in there? Didn’t you find him?” Cleo gestured to the room from which Harvey had emerged. She made to run in, but Harvey ensnared her in his arms. “Harvey, let me go in and see him.”

  “Cleo, Gnochi passed away.” He watched as his words, however soft he meant them to sound, slam into Cleo’s ears as bluntly as a hammer.

  “You’re lying. He can’t be,” Cleo pleaded. She pulled Harvey forward with an incredible strength. The group inched into the room, all eyes gravitating to the covered corpse where it rested on the cot. “Can’t we give him anything?” She pulled closer, then knelt, tugging gingerly at the cover and revealing Gnochi’s head and shoulders. An ugly cry leapt from her mouth the moment she saw the peaceful expression on his face. Her arms ensnared him in a tight hug. “You don’t get to leave me now. It’s too soon.” She buried her face in his neck and rested her shaking hands on his chest.

  Harvey placed an assuring hand on her shoulder.

  Cleo reared back from his touch as if burned. “You didn’t even do compressions,” she screamed. “You don’t care.” Tears streaked down her cheeks.