by Scott Moore
It was the most obvious question Miles had ever been asked. Her spine protruded out the wrong side of her skin. Her blood coated the floor like fresh paint. There was no way a human body could be in that position unless they were dead. Yet, Miles couldn’t answer the question.
Sammy walked over and looked down upon the woman, or what was left of her. He still didn’t seem disgusted or shocked, just curious.
“What happened?” he asked again.
Miles wanted to tell him, but he doubted even Sammy would believe what had occurred here. He would see it the way the others would see it. Miles glanced toward the door, Sammy had left it wide open. Wide open for the world to peer into the room and see what they would perceive as his sins. They would not ask him questions. They would hang him. Maybe he deserved it, but not for this. Miles thought about jumping up and slamming the door shut, but his legs were like mud, so he stayed put.
Sammy kneeled down to the woman. “I think she is dead,” he said.
Was this man that stupid? Sammy looked up toward Miles. It would click soon. He would gather his thoughts and conclude that Miles had done this. He would run toward the open door and scream for the guards to come and get Miles. Nothing to do for it, might as well accept it. He would be killed sooner or later anyhow for betraying the king, maybe here there would be less torture involved.
In the long run, after refusing the king’s orders, fleeing from the lordship he was supposed to take, joining the rebel army, making plans to attack one of the king’s largest cities, and then doing so; adding murder of a whore seemed tame after some thought. Miles still didn’t want to die though; and therein lay the problem. If Sammy screamed out for help, then Miles would have to fight his way free. Maybe he could do just that, those downstairs weren’t soldiers. He doubted they even carried weapons upon their bodies. They would just inconvenience him in the long run, but then the news would be his killer. Someone would escape, it always happened. News traveled much faster than Miles could. One runner would tell another and soon all travelers would spread the word of a rebel killing town citizens. People would lock their doors tight at night and cry wolf at any suspicious behavior. Miles wouldn’t be able to visit a town without being questioned.
Nothing to do for it. Sammy stood back up and took a step toward Miles.
“Why did you do it?” he asked.
It sounded strange he didn’t seem worried or threatened. He sounded curious like a child asking why the sky was blue or leaves were green.
Miles licked his lips they were unreasonably dry. His heart still pounded, and he took another glance toward the body. Better to dispel the rumor at least to a single ear, he doubted Sammy would believe him, but he could at least get it off his chest.
His words started out dry and cracking. “I didn’t do it.” He coughed and cleared his throat, taking another deep breath and trying to calm his nerves. “It was those damn things,” he continued. “Those creatures we saw in the woods, the ones I saw in the city, they came back.”
Sammy turned and nodded.
“I could feel them,” he said. Then he turned back to Miles. “I think we should go. The men downstairs don’t seem to like me much.”
That was that. He believed Miles as easy as his word. Miles looked for any sign of a bluff, but Sammy’s face stayed the same. He was either the best cards player in the kingdom, or he believed Miles.
Miles held out his hand and Sammy grabbed it helping him up.
“Let me grab my pants,” he said.
***
Sammy had never witnessed a dead body before, at least he couldn’t remember seeing one. It weirded and fascinated him at the same time. The color had faded from her body so fast. What once were rose red cheeks, were now pale white slabs of skin. Her piercing blue eyes already looked gray and distant. Her face looked nothing like a face anymore, so slack and relaxed, it reminded him of cloth. Like the woman had exchanged her once beautiful face for a cheap mask. Sammy wanted to prod the body and touch it, but it grossed him out.
Sammy heard Miles grunt behind him and drew his eyes away from the body. Miles hopped up and down on one leg, trying to get his pants up over his naked body. Sammy wondered what the two had been up to in this room before he arrived. They were both naked and Miles seemed to be looking for something before they had made their way up to this room. Sammy hoped that Miles found whatever it was before the creatures had come. He hoped the creatures hadn’t stolen whatever Miles had needed.
Miles grunted again and then had himself covered at the waist. Not a moment too soon either, Sammy was more than ready to leave this place. The men downstairs had made him feel uncomfortable. Then they had run out like he was one of those creatures Miles ran from. It seemed other people were always fearful. Why then wasn’t he scared?
“Let’s get out of here before those men find her,” Miles said, heading for the doorway.
Sammy couldn’t agree more. He doubted very much that the men behind the bar would believe Miles about the beast. What had drawn them here anyhow? What had Sammy felt when they came? It was odd, like a sensation telling him that something happened that wasn’t right, but Sammy couldn’t understand it.
Miles halted before exiting the doorway. “Maybe down the stairs isn’t the best way out,” he said. Miles turned back into the room and headed toward the window at the far end. After a few seconds of struggling, he pulled the old window open.
“Come here,” he motioned for Sammy.
Sammy walked over and looked down at the ground. The dirt below didn’t seem far.
“Climb down,” Miles said.
How hard could it be, Sammy thought? Miles pushed him on the shoulder and Sammy didn’t resist him.
As it turned out, it was extremely hard to get down to the ground. The wooden post provided no foot or handholds for him. He dangled from the roof like a loose branch on a tree. Then as his fingers grew tired, he fell all the way to the ground. What had moments before not seemed like a far distance became a lot farther away. He hit the ground and let out a loud shriek. He hadn’t even meant to make the noise, it came out without him even trying. His shoulder popped, and he felt pain shoot through his body. Real pain, something he couldn’t remember ever feeling before. He didn’t enjoy it. His other hand instinctively reached for his injured shoulder and he rubbed it.
Miles hit the ground a few seconds later, landing on his feet. “You think you can fly there?” he asked with a smirk on his face.
Sammy stood up and wiped the dirt from his shirt and pants. His shoulder still hurt, but the pain had mostly subsided. Sammy looked at his hands and saw the small pieces of wood sticking from them, they burned.
Miles looked and laughed. “Quit being a girl,” he said.
Sammy wasn’t even sure what that meant.
“They are just splinters,” Miles added, as Sammy stood there with the confused look on his face. “We have to get out of here, you can take care of them later.”
The bar seemed to be devoid of people. A quiet filled the surrounding area.
It didn’t stay that way. Miles instructed Sammy not to run or act different from before. He had said that this would draw unwanted attention running was something that guilty people did. Miles then led them back into the town square and started to make for the edge of town. Miles said that traveling on the road would save them time. Traveling into the woods would only hold them back. None of the people stopped them as they moved past. Barely any of them even looked up, but Sammy could tell something had changed. Where they had gone about their own business before, they now avoided stares with the two men, and stopped what they were doing to look away as they moved past. Sammy didn’t mention it to Miles sure that Miles noticed it too.
They reached the edge of town before they got their surprise. The three men, who had been in the bar with Sammy and Miles, stepped out into the path and blocked the way out of town.
“There he is the freak with the eyes,” the loud-mouthed man said.
&
nbsp; Sammy stared straight forward, still not knowing what the man got on about. He had mentioned his eyes in the bar, but Sammy couldn’t understand what he meant by it.
The man rose his hand and pointed at Sammy. “You aren’t going anywhere,” he said.
Then his face contorted into some weird expression Sammy had never seen before. That’s when Sammy heard the movement behind him. He turned and saw that Miles had pulled his rusted sword from his belt loop.
15
Nov looked out over the crowd of soldiers, surprised they had come to his call. Some had probably stayed in the barracks, others were out meandering, but a good number had shown up to listen. There would be no guarantee they would go along with his plan, but at least they would hear his words.
Nov stepped up in front of the mess hall tables. Nowhere in the barracks was suited for a speech or a rally. Most of the time Earl sent out bulletins by messenger or just posted them on the sleeping quarters wall. Earl’s words were listened to much more than his would be, but he still had to try. The alternative was listening to Alti, and that scared him more than he liked to admit.
“Thanks for coming,” Nov said. The echoes of his words bounced around the small room. He heard murmurs of greeting, but he saw even more hard eyes looking like they would have rather been anywhere else.
“Where is Earl?”
Any of them could have asked. Every thought trailed to the same place. Nov felt the pang of guilt that he didn’t know the answer. No one knew the answer to that question as far as Nov knew.
“I have some news for everyone. It isn’t going to be easy to hear, but I believe that everyone needs to hear it.” Nov tried to put conviction behind his words. He would need these men to rally behind him. He would need them to grab their swords and pretend they knew how to use them. “I have to be able to count on each of you.”
Nov would have liked to see heads nodding, but he saw mostly blank stares and a few stifled yawns. Nov wondered how many men had come just because of lunch time and not for him.
“I want everyone to know that Earl led a defense party into the plains outside the wall a few days ago. It didn’t go well.” Nov waited for gasps or questions, but the men only waited for him to elaborate. “Everyone that went with the patrol is dead, Earl is injured in the hospital wing.” Nov figured Earl walked with the dead, but he didn’t have it in him to say it.
The whispers came. Hushed voices claimed that they were done with the theatrics of being a soldier. Others claimed to want in on the election of leadership. None of them realized that the implication meant that the Groundborn had attacked in a horde for the first time since the wars. Not a single one rallied their sword to avenge their brothers. The city fell into shambles and each man only cared about their title and rank.
***
Alti had read the memo from Nov. She hadn’t been invited to the rally, but she came anyhow. Nov had already started when she arrived. His last-ditch effort to achieve what couldn’t be achieved without doing the extreme. Too many people had forgotten what the war was like. Too many people forgot what near extinction looked like. Nov wouldn’t be able to bring that back to them with words. They needed to see it for themselves. The claws, the teeth, the yellows eyes. They needed it up close and personal to believe it affected them.
Otherwise they would continue with their normal lives. Alti wished she could show them the histories her mother had told her about. She wished that they could imagine the death and destruction that built at the foot of their walls.
She couldn’t. Even if she could, they wouldn’t believe her. Alti as a child hadn’t believed her mother. Why would she have? Where she grew up everything had seemed so normal. It had to have been right and anything else a tale made up to scare her. Alti shook the bedtime stories from her mind.
Nov shouted the men out of their whispers. They snapped to attention. Maybe he could scare them. If he could, she would praise his ambition. Then maybe they could do this the easy way. They could rally the city with the overwhelming numbers and save the last of Sera.
Alti moved closer through the shadows so she could hear Nov. Maybe his words would mean she didn’t have to fight.
***
“This isn’t about your place in the food-chain. This is about you becoming food.” Nov tried to express it as grotesquely as he could imagine, but the faces didn’t change. “The Groundborn are right outside our gates. The council do not care. Hamms does not care. No one out there cares and it is left to us to care.”
“Why should we care?” a soldier asked.
Nov thought barreling into the soldier. Showing him exactly why he should care. He didn’t.
“If we don’t care then no one else will.”
The soldiers shuffled. Some even left the room.
“What happens then?” one soldier asked.
Nov thought of the destruction he had seen. Thought of the histories that he had read. The slaughter would be painful and leave nothing behind.
“The extinction of our kind. Sera falls and nothing is left. There is nothing left to rule over. Our riches will mean nothing. Our power will mean nothing. If everyone dies, it won’t matter who sat on the council. It will be of little consequence who became a noble and who licked shit from the shoes of peasants.” Nov’s voice grew louder and trailed without the need for the echoes to be heard.
The soldiers didn’t look convinced.
“Why don’t the council care?”
Nov knew the answer to that. The council had their power and wouldn’t give it up on the whims of a soldier. They would have to see the dire need. He thought of Alti’s plan and balked at it. He could still do this, he could still save himself from having to follow through with that plan.
“They don’t believe in the threat. They haven’t seen the Groundborn. They haven’t fought them.”
“Who has?” a soldier yelled.
“I just told you that we have. Your fellow soldiers and your captain.”
A moment of silence followed. Earl’s presence would have sealed the deal. As it stood, Nov failed to make any of them understand. No one wanted to fight, not if it meant losing their spot.
***
Nov lost the room before he could gain a single soul. The promise of luxury couldn’t be overcome. Men and women of Sera wanted only one thing, the comforts of power and riches. Nothing else existed that they would fight as hard for. If Nov had promised them glory and a council spot, then they may have fought for him.
Instead, he told them that the council had blown him off. He told them that their most famous soldier, Hamms had waved him away. If the men and women with power didn’t want in on this, then the bet wasn’t sound. They didn’t care about the proposed threat outside the walls. What did that matter to them? They were safe behind whatever stopped the Groundborn from entering.
Alti thought of the words of the other side. Not her mother, but the others she had grown up around. She had believed them for so long. Believed that what they did was for the right side. Her mother had only told her the stories to make her feel bad. To scare her into always being good. Then she saw everything for herself and remembered her mother’s last words. Protect them. Alti wished Nov would have been able to convince them.
She didn’t want to go through with her plan any more than he did. It hinged on a risk and she hated risks. It would work though. She knew she could kill the Groundborn. Knew that they posed no real threat to her. Not with what she could do.
Alti moved as close as she could without making herself known to Nov. She willed him to see the lost cause in the room. She willed him to have the strength to go through with what needed to be done. She tried to push the image of the slaughter he had seen toward him. If he remembered what was at stake, then she believed he would go through with what needed to be done.
***
Nov sucked his chest full of air and blew out hard. There were histories he could recite. He could tell the men here about the thousands who had died on their
trek toward Sera. He could tell them about why being a soldier made them more important than just themselves. Words could spill from him until his face turned blue, and still they wouldn’t hear their meaning.
They would ask the same questions and hear their own answers. Power, money, greed, the common voice of the people. Alti spoke the truth. No matter how he spun it she had been right, and he had only been filled with a fool’s hope.
Nov looked out over the dwindling crowd. He wouldn’t have men to lead soon. Nothing to fear about being leader if no one followed.
Nov stepped off the platform. He walked outside and let the afternoon sun warm his skin. No one noticed he left, or at least no one ran out to stop him. They would eat and move through the motions of the day.
Nov had no choice left. He walked a few steps forward and stopped along a small fence railing that led to the combat yard. It didn’t matter if he agreed with Alti. Maybe the plan wouldn’t work. He wasn’t sure of much anymore, but he knew he had to try. If the city wouldn’t look out over the walls and fear for themselves, then maybe he would have to let the fear in to greet them.
And so, it goes that the sword of a man is never really his own, it belongs to the man with the tongue and his ear.
16
Miles didn’t need a refresher on the actions of villagers. They were idiots, and they banded together to ward off evil. What that meant in simpler terms; don’t be an outsider in a small town. Keep his head down and walk on through, that’s what Miles should have done, but his cock and his throat had made other plans for him.
Miles wondered if the village people had already discovered the prostitute’s body but found it unlikely they had. Meaning that they had another reason to be here in a mob of anger. The front man pointed to Sammy, who had probably opened his damn mouth inside the bar. Miles couldn’t leave the poor fool alone for a minute it seemed.
The men yelled and pulled out random objects they intended to use as weapons. Miles had already drawn his rusted sword. Again, he fought for the words of another man. The king said to fight, and Miles suited up. The king said to kill a child and Miles suited up for the other side. Going against a man he swore he loved just months before. Now Sammy had opened his mouth and shit had spilled forth, causing Miles to draw his sword again. It seemed to never end.