by Devin Madson
For the most part we all sat in silence, my companions breaking it only for short stretches of strained conversation punctuated with grimaces. When the rain eased around sunset, the empress took her bow and stepped outside to disrupt the evening with the rhythmic twang and thud of loosed arrows. From where I sat propped against the wall, I could not see her, but I listened to the speed and precision of her drawing action and doubted I could best her.
“Tomorrow we’ll see if you can ride,” Tor said, returning again to the conversation about our future like an itchy scab. “The camp can’t be too far away and you can let Jinso do all the work.”
A Levanti camp was a good place to recover my strength so I agreed, but asked for more water before he could again broach the topic of going home. No doubt he would soon sense a pattern in my reluctance, but for now the boy jumped up without complaint and, throwing his long, straight ponytail over his shoulder, strode out to the rain barrel, cup in hand.
He ought to have been back in seconds, but minutes passed. Under the watchful gaze of the empress’s companion, I dragged myself to the door. Tor had frozen on his way back from the water barrel, full cup in hand and his eyes caught to the empress loosing the same ten arrows one after another into the rotting wall of an old building. Once the tenth left her string she strode to pull them out, showing no sign at all she knew or cared that we were watching.
“She’d best all but the finest of our archers, I think,” I said. “At least while stationary. If she could do it while riding, I would really be impressed.”
Tor flinched and looked away. “Sorry.” He glanced at the cup in his hand as though surprised to find it had water in it already, and held it out. “Got distracted.”
“Knowing she could put an arrow through both of our eyes in the space of a breath is very distracting.”
He crushed the beginnings of a smile with a shake of his head and turned away. “If only they thought as much of our skills.”
That night the empress’s companion laid out four stale sleeping mats, one in the curtained-off room for her, the other three in the main room for us. The little moving about I had forced myself to do had exhausted me more than I had thought, and no sooner had I lain down properly than I fell asleep.
Whether it was the pain that roused me or something else, I woke to the hiss of whispers. The main room was dark and beside me Tor was a shadowed lump curled upon himself like a dog before a fire, but the Kisian man was missing. I rolled to look at the curtain to the other room. Light crept around the edges of the heavy fabric, and behind it their whispers were little more than the shifting of sand in the wind. Curious, I would have shaken Tor awake had the empress’s voice not broken on a sob. I stilled, listening to her companion’s comforting murmur, and felt a stab of guilt. A foolish, ridiculous stab of guilt, I told myself, given how little control we’d had over the Chiltaen conquest, but a stab of guilt all the same.
For a long time, I lay awake staring at the ceiling and listening to a grief that was nothing like my own and yet the same in every way.
When Empress Miko checked my wound the following morning, I found I could not meet her gaze. No matter how furiously she scowled upon the world, the memory of her sorrow stuck in my mind.
She lifted the torn wadding from my leg, ignoring my wince at the way it stuck to the dried blood and stitching. Her fingers worked deftly, examining her handiwork but making no move to clean it.
“It needs salt water,” I said, and she looked up as though surprised I could speak. “I can do it myself if you’ll get some for me.” She switched her gaze to Tor, who translated.
Once he had finished, he added in Levanti, “I’ve had to keep telling them that’s what it needs. You’d think they’ve never had to keep a wound clean before. Maybe they haven’t. She’s definitely never stitched someone up.”
“That’s surprising given the work is neat.”
“She’s used to stitching, just not skin.”
The empress looked from Tor to me and back as we spoke, and the concerned creasing of her brow showed the first visible crack in her assurance. Tor sighed. “I’ll heat some water once the fire is going. At least it’s not raining anymore.”
The morning had dawned misty and grey, but any hope of seeing the sun died all too soon. Before Tor had finished cleaning my wound, rain was once more pattering on the roof. It stuck around into the afternoon as I dozed off and on and ate whatever was given to me, slowly feeling life return to my flesh. Tor had decided I was still too weak to ride, but he brought me a comfortable account of Jinso from the stables and assured me we would soon be back with our own people.
For the most part the empress and her companion kept to themselves, the four of us a dour group each caught in our own dark thoughts.
Until a scream cut through the rain. My gaze snapped to the door. Too well did I know the difference between a scream of shock and a scream of pain. And the sound of hoofbeats. They rose from the drumming rain only to break rhythm as they slowed and circled.
Empress Miko stood, bow in hand. Her guard followed. They were at the door before I could speak or even recall that speaking Levanti would have no purpose. I had no weapon, but I struggled up and limped after them as fast as my injured leg would allow. “What is it?” Tor said, a hunting knife appearing in his hand. “Horses?”
“That’s her!” came a shout—a shout I understood, for out in the pelting rain three horses circled the yard while a fourth stood near the barn, the only sign of its rider a foot caught and twisted in the stirrup. The empress nocked a new arrow, while before her on the steps her guard drew his sword.
“Stop!” I shouted, a steadying hand upon the door frame. The faces of the Levanti were lost to the storm, but their heads turned as an arrow leapt from the blackened bow, missing a fretting horse by a hair.
I gripped the next arrow as she drew it. The empress snarled and ripped her hand free, but a fragile moment of peace settled on the strange scene and she did not immediately draw again.
“Rah e’Torin?” a voice called through the rain. “Twice a traitor now?”
“A traitor? Never to those who live with honour. Why are you here?”
The speaker slowly walked their horse close enough to make out a vaguely familiar face, one I had seen around but could put no name to. She pointed at the empress. “That one. Emperor Gideon requires her.”
“Dead?” I asked, not that the answer would matter. What I had seen of Empress Miko was enough to know she would not go willingly. The fragile peace was already straining, pulled taut like the empress’s bowstring.
“What does it matter to you?” The woman sneered at me. “Going to stop us? Whatever orders I have don’t extend to protecting your life.”
Tor shoved past me into the rain. “Rah is worth ten of Gideon,” he shouted. “What is a Levanti without honour? A Levanti who forgets who we are?”
“I don’t know, but a castrated runt would be more leader than you could ever be, you unmade little bitch.”
“Get down off your horse and say that again,” Tor snarled, his hand clenching and unclenching upon his hunting knife.
“Tor,” I said. “These are our people, they—”
“They are not my people.”
He strode past the empress, who looked from the riders to me and back, fingering the feathers of another arrow.
The challenged rider leapt from her horse, drawing both her blades before Tor. He still had the long hair of a saddleboy, but he was well past Making age. He was a true Sword of the Torin and did not tremble to face a foe. To face his own blood.
“Tor, don’t!” I shouted, but he did not turn. The empress loosed. Her arrow slammed into their leader’s shoulder, jolting her back. And before she could regain her balance, Tor was on her. Heedless of the death that might await upon those curved blades, the young man charged in, burying his shoulder in his opponent’s gut. Together they fell to the mud in a tangle of limbs and steel and rain.
Ano
ther arrow cut past a Sword’s ear as she turned to charge. The guard stepped to meet her, and the whole scene became a rain-soaked nightmare. He dodged the first swing only for her second blade to slice his arm, ripping free a spray of blood. He staggered but drew a dagger as the Levanti circled back to charge again. In a shower of mud the horse bore down upon him. He stepped left, then right, feigning indecision though he held the dagger steady until the very last moment—the moment he buried it deep in the animal’s neck. Blood gushed and the horse’s knees buckled, throwing its rider.
And all the while, I had not moved. Empress Miko’s sword hung before me, its hilt within reach. I could take it. I could fight. But for who? For my people? Or for those who had done nothing to deserve the devastation we had brought to their lands?
I had to choose, but I did not. Could not. Not when the second rider charged. Not when his blade slashed her guard’s side. Not even when the empress screamed and drew the sword I hadn’t as she charged into the rain.
The second rider leapt from his saddle to land in front of her, no doubt intending to capture her unharmed. If he had hoped for an easy task, what he got instead was the onslaught of a furious warrior.
Tor had their leader pinned to the ground, but I only had eyes for the avenging force of Empress Miko, pushing her enemy back with strike after strike, not seeming to care about protecting herself from retaliation.
Beaten back to the other side of the yard, the Levanti man ducked clear and ran for his horse. The empress didn’t give chase. Dropping her blade, she drew her bow and nocked before the man covered half the distance.
“No!”
Even had she heard me, even had she understood, it would have been too late. The arrow leapt from her string to bury itself in the Sword’s back, throwing him forward onto his face where he twitched in the mud.
A heartbeat of shock held everyone frozen. Gideon’s Levanti were all dead or dying and still I had not moved from the step. Tor stood, chest heaving, in the middle of the yard while
with a sharp cry the empress ran toward her injured companion. She knelt, patting his chest and babbling, her voice catching on a sob as she gestured to the cottage. Tor, covered in equal parts mud and blood, darted to obey, disappearing inside.
On stiff, aching legs, I staggered toward her. She had managed to help her companion to sit and was talking fast and moving even faster, trying to stem the bleeding.
“We should get him inside.” I gestured to the cottage out of which Tor now sped. “We should get him inside,” I repeated to him. “Help me.”
He nodded, and bent so her companion could put his arm around his neck. Gritting my teeth, I made to help, but the empress shouldered me out of the way and aided the man herself. Lifted between them, the guard cried out as he was half carried, half dragged past me to the cottage steps. They edged him awkwardly inside in silence, two heads of long, dark hair bent about their task, their arms meeting across his mud-stained back.
Inside they set him down and the empress began cutting away cloth with her dagger. Tor had the water back boiling over the fire and was putting his time as a healer’s aid to good use. All saddleboys and -girls learned the basics as part of their training. Mine was all a little hazy, but Tor prepared strips of linen with ease while the empress worked.
Soon the wound was exposed, a bloody mess sliced from hip to underarm. His ribs seemed to have protected his upper torso from worse damage, but the lower part had not been so lucky. Blood oozed beneath the empress’s shaking hands. For a moment I met Tor’s gaze. We had both seen wounds like it—impossible not to when your purpose is to fight and die for your herd—we had just never seen people recover from them. Determination and good care often kept them going for a while, but not even Yitti could have fixed this.
The empress dipped the linen in the hot water, but every time she cleaned some blood, more returned. She spoke as she worked, Tor’s reply a shake of his head. She gestured to the needle and thread, and again he shook his head. She raised her voice, tears spilling, and I could not watch. Could not stay, so immersed in her suffocating hope.
Retreating into tradition, I went back out and sank into the mud beside the closest body, ignoring the searing pain in my thigh and the weight of my exhausted limbs.
I drew a blade from the dead Levanti’s belt. Its hilt felt wrong just as his head felt too heavy. I did not recognise him, but a branding like that of the Jaroven or the Oht stood proud on the back of his head. Without paint it was hard to be sure. One of Dishiva’s? Nausea swelled at the thought. I swallowed it and made the first incision. Blood flowed onto the already sodden ground. Better not to look at it. Better not to think. Better to just let my well-practised hands take over.
With one finished, I moved to the next—the one Tor had fought. Taking the head ought to have been his responsibility, but he was occupied trying to save life; it was the least I could do to save souls. The babble of his heated conversation with the empress lapped at the edge of my awareness as I slid my blade into the woman’s throat. Tor had made a mess of the body, thrusting his blade again and again into the woman’s chest, arms, and stomach—anywhere that might vent some of his fury. Fury that had overcome respect.
With each body my progress slowed, my arms tiring and my leg stinging with angry pain. But I could not let their souls Reside, so I worked on, no matter how long each took, no matter how much I had to suffer to see it done. Deep down I knew I deserved it. That I was still that boy who had run.
The third Sword’s neck was thinner than the others, and the fourth’s had snapped. Her horse lay in the mud like a discarded sack of meat. It might have been little else to most people, but to us a horse was life. Freedom. Everything. This one’s glorious soul had fled its broken body to run upon the spirit fields and I sang while I worked upon its master, a song to guide its way home.
By the time I had finished the fourth head, Tor had emerged from the house and was raiding the Levanti saddlebags for supplies. We did not speak as I piled the heads in the centre of the yard, moving so slowly that Tor had finished his task long before I had.
With them all gathered, I walked toward the woodcutter’s house in search of a sack or crate in which to carry them. Yet there by the open door I found a fifth body. The woodcutter lay face down upon the muddy earth, an axe in his hand and a great split upon the back of his skull. His wife crouched nearby, rain mingling with the tears running down her cheeks.
Hardly thinking anymore, I unsheathed my knife and, dropping soaked knees to the mud, rolled the dead man into my lap. The woman spoke, her words meaning as little as rain upon already soaked skin. Blood burst from my first incision. I had taken enough Kisian heads to know their blood was the same as ours. We were all the same once life fled, all just as fragile. Alive one moment, dead the next, the weight of each individual soul upon the world as fleeting as a sparrow.
The woman spoke again, sobbing as I slit muscle and skin and tendons with the serrated edge of my blade. My arms ached and my wound burned, but it needed to be done. Just this one and I could rest.
Someone shoved me sideways, but pinned by the dead body I did not fall. Empress Miko Ts’ai stood over me, her brows caught in a scowl as fierce as her dragon mask. Blood stained her hands and she was talking fast, gesturing to the dead woodcutter and his wife. Unable to understand a word, I continued my task.
Pressing her muddy foot to my shoulder she kicked me, and I hit the ground hard enough to knock my teeth together.
“His soul must be offered back to the world!” I said, wiping mud from my face.
She shouted something else, gesturing wildly.
“Tor! Tor!” I called, and after a moment the boy appeared, his lips set in a grim line. I pointed to the woodcutter’s body. “Tell her I have to do this or his soul will be trapped. Even a Kisian cannot be allowed to Reside.”
Only when Tor spoke did the empress stop shouting, but his words did nothing to lighten her expression. She replied and Tor’s face redd
ened. “She says this is barbaric,” he said. “She says you are… dishonouring this man by mutilating his body.”
“This is honour.” I spoke directly to her, not Tor. “You said we didn’t understand honour but you are wrong. To us, this is honour. Honouring the dead by releasing their souls so they may be born again. I do this out of respect.”
Tor spoke as I did, and when he finished her eyes narrowed.
“He is already dead,” she said, her voice coming from Tor’s lips. “His soul is already gone. Let him be.”
“I cannot,” I said. “I—”
She interrupted with a few curt words, and Tor said, “She says you are upsetting his wife.”
The crying woman was rocking back and forth now, rain running down her face and over her silently gaping mouth. My stomach dropped, horror seeping in as I realised her grief was not just for the loss of him, but for what I was doing.
The empress spoke again. “She wishes to perform the burial rites,” Tor said for her. “She wishes to wash her husband’s body and lay him out, she wishes to—”
“But… But he will be lost!”
“Then let him be lost. The dead are dead. The alive need to grieve their own way for they are the ones who remain.”
My bloodstained hands clenched into fists and loosened again, every joint aching. This was what we did. This was how we ensured souls did not get trapped, unable to be reborn. But how could I explain that Residing souls clung as surely to those left behind?
The empress lifted her brows, daring me to keep cutting.
When I did not move, Tor spoke her damnation. “You come into our lands and you kill our people. You mutilate their corpses whether they want you to or not. And after you’ve forced these horrors upon us you have the gall to call it honour? Put down the knife. Now.”