The Wound of the World

by Edward W. Robertson

  "It was no more than a thought." The Keeper bowed at the waist, pointing the crown of her gray head at Dante. "If we succeed in prying the basin from Mallon's claws, these people will never forget you."

  He scowled. She was getting too good at reading him. "We just handed the Mallish their own asses. Along with a fork and a knife and a tin of pepper. Why are you so sure they'll send a second attack?"

  "They can't allow us to defy them. It would signal weakness to their other holdings. Worse, it would embolden their enemies. But mostly, they will return because we are Arawn-worshippers. Our victory defiles the body of their empire. When a wound festers, if you fail to treat it, it will claim the rest of the body as well."

  "They might not be able to hit back right away. Especially if I can kill Gladdic, they might have to wait until spring to organize their forces."

  "Then that gives my people six months to prepare."

  "Is it too late to make demands for our help?" Blays said. "I'm going to require a steady supply of meat pies. And something to wash them down with. In fact, make that three somethings."

  Dante turned to take in the darkened city. "That's a good place to get started. To win a war, you have to secure three resources. Your land. Your resources. And your allies. We need scouts in the field and troops ready to respond."

  The Keeper lowered herself to a bench, massaging her knees. "Field command is the duty of the despot. And Despot Jodd is dead."

  "Then we need a replacement. Cord would make a good choice. We've already proven we can work with her."

  "Despots aren't crowned like Mallish kings. They are elected by the people."

  "Then fake the election, if it will make you feel better. But remember that you declared me to be a god. As Arawn's avatar, I declare that Cord will be my sword."

  The Keeper examined him for signs of mockery, then made a tight line of her mouth. "So be it."

  She went to speak to a messenger, who hastened off through the night. Dante's stomach rumbled. To distract himself, and improve his rapidly deteriorating mood, he joined the monks in tending to the casualties, sending the nether to mend the wounds of the suffering. He'd set five people to resting easily by the time the messenger returned with Cord.

  Her blond braid was a mess, her eyelids were as puffy as kneaded dough, and she was covered in any number of scratches and bandages. Even so, she walked up to them with the same tireless energy she'd displayed ever since Blays had dueled her on their arrival at Collen.

  When Dante explained they were staying to help stabilize the basin, she laughed and clapped her rough hands together.

  He couldn't help smiling back at her. "But we aren't here to rule you. Collen needs its own leaders. We'd like you to become the new despot."

  Cord crinkled her forehead. "The despot? I can't do that!"

  "We won't be here for more than a few months. Someone has to be ready to take the reins. You're one of the best soldiers in Collen. The others will respect you. I know you're up to the challenge."

  "The Keeper agrees with this?"

  The old woman nodded. "I do."

  "Then I will lead the other soldiers. But I can't be despot. I can't run a kingdom any more than I can drink the well dry. To pretend otherwise is to disgrace myself! To let down my people!"

  "Then you'll join the proud tradition of every other leader since time began," Blays said. "Present company excluded, of course."

  "It doesn't have to be permanent," Dante said. "Right now, the martial side is all that matters. You won't have to bother with policy. Once the war is over, you can step down and be proud of what you've done."

  Cord brayed with laughter. "I think you mistake yourself for me. If you need me, I'll command our army. But I won't command our republic."

  Blays swigged another beer. Dante hadn't even seen him get it. He was starting to suspect Blays' true talents lay in the hidden art of brewermancy.

  "Who cares about tradition?" Blays said. "Just invoke the god clause again. Cord can command the military while someone else handles politics. I nominate the Keeper."

  "That can't be." Seated on the bench, the Keeper tugged her robe over her bony shins. "I've spent decades in the shrine. I don't know the ways of our politics. Besides, there are things I must be able to do as the Keeper that I could not do as our leader."

  "You know who knows even less about Collenese politics? Me and Dante. The ex-Mallishmen who've spent the last half of our lives freezing to death in Gask. So how about you tell us who's a good choice for administrator?"

  Cord nodded once. "Ked came with me. He will know. I will get him." She cupped her hands to her mouth. "Ked! Ked!"

  The man detached from a knot of soldiers and jogged over to them. Dante had first met Ked while saving the man's life from a mortal wound at the hand of Mallish soldiers. This had turned out to be such a horrific insult that Ked had challenged him to a duel on the spot. Still, the man greeted them with a smile, apparently having put all enmity behind him.

  "Ked!" Cord motioned to the dark city. "Great things are afoot. These people have named me commander of the military."

  Ked's eyebrows swung up his forehead. He took a knee. "Congratulations, Despot."

  "Don't be a fool! If I were named despot, my first act would be to imprison those who thought I would be any good at it, as they are clearly a menace to right-thinking people everywhere."

  "We need an administrator," the Keeper said. "Someone competent and respected enough to maintain control during the coming troubles."

  Ked folded his arms, nodding vaguely. "I would have suggested Yorra, but they executed her. What about Twane?"

  Cord shook her head. "Fell in battle. But his son would do just as well, yes?"

  "Well, yes, except that they dragged him off to Bressel to be tried for heresy."

  They ran through several other names, all of which had either died or gone missing. Cord set her fists on her hips. "Gregg. I saw him just today."

  "That's not such a good idea. When the Mallish were here, he showed them to our weapons caches."

  "He aided the invaders? But why?"

  "There's only two reasons to do a thing like that," Dante said. "The Mallish offered to make him rich, or make his people dead."

  Ked bobbed his head. "Either way, he's out. The people won't trust him."

  They lapsed into a second silence. Blays made a thoughtful noise. "What about Boggs?"

  "Boggs Twill?" Dante said. "Captain Twill's brother? He didn't exactly strike me as a born politician."

  "Which is probably why the Colleners would go for him. Think about it. No one would ever question his loyalty. Not after what the Mallish did to Twill."

  "Brother of a fallen hero. From a successful merchant family. Hard to imagine someone who could instantly command that much respect."

  "And he already has a relationship with the Parthians, doesn't he? That ought to make it a little easier to get them aboard the victory wagon."

  "This is a very cunning piece of politics," Dante said. "Are you sure you thought of it?"

  "I haven't even finished. He's also got Twill's plans to extend the irrigation canals across the basin and into Parth. If he does that, trade will explode."

  "Say no more. I'm ready to declare the Collenese golden age."

  "And all we have to do first is thwart the giant empire that's controlled this place since the days when the gods were still learning to wipe themselves."

  After getting the enthusiastic agreement of Cord, Ked, and the Keeper, they dispatched a messenger to the Twill residence outside of Dog's Paw. Knowing it would be four days until Boggs or his refusal returned to the city, Dante sat down with Cord and Blays to hash out the initial military strategy.

  The first order of business was to establish a scout network along the border, along with sweeps of the interior to ensure that no Mallish forces were hiding out in the vast, empty spaces between the settlements. Lookouts would be established along the king's road from Mallon and across
the hills fronting the western border, with instructions to light a signal fire at the first sign of invasion.

  Next came the summoning of recruits from the basin's six major towns. Bound by their Code of the Wasp to support each other in times of war, their troops would provide a critical supplement to the city's battered army.

  The defense strategy itself was rather straightforward: hole up in Collen. There was only a single road up to the top of the plateau, making it eminently defensible. Starting tomorrow, Dante would open most of a tunnel down to the plains. If the city was in danger of being overrun, he could complete the tunnel with a few minutes' work, providing the Colleners with an escape route.

  Unless Mallon's next force was small enough to meet in the open field, they would have to abandon the outlying towns. The Small Senates weren't going to be happy about that. The best Dante could do was suggest they make plans to withdraw their families, livestock, and valuables to the foothills of the eastern mountains, or into the deserts of Parth, with a free-roaming regiment comprised of recruits from the six towns assigned to kill any Mallish scouts who came too close.

  A couple of hours before dawn, Dante found himself falling asleep at the table. He excused himself to go to bed. Blays did the same, walking with him toward the manor that was becoming their makeshift command station.

  "Still think this is a good idea?" Blays said.

  "I think I'd like to be sitting on the roof of the Citadel watching the bay in the company of a large beverage."

  "There's nothing keeping us here, you know. This isn't our land. These aren't our people. If you wanted, you could kill a few crows, reanimate them, tie their feet to a harness, and fly us back to Narashtovik."

  "You want to walk away? Careful, you're starting to sound like the old you."

  Blays shrugged. "Never hurts to remind yourself about your options."

  Dante detoured around an overturned wagon. "I think we can do this. But if things turn south, we need a plan to get out of here."

  "I'll get some packs of provisions. And map out a route. One that doesn't involve the road into Mallon."

  Dante slept heavily, waking to a lake of aches and pains that had swamped his body overnight. He was tempted to sweep them away with a brush of nether, but he didn't like the idea of pretending he wasn't susceptible to pain and exhaustion. That felt like a good way to breed delusions in himself. When an entire city was singing his praises to the sky, the last thing he needed was more grist for his ego.

  The Keeper called on him while he was in the middle of a breakfast of toast and honey. "The Mallish emptied the granaries." Her face was stony, her voice harder yet. "There isn't enough left to feed the city for more than a few days."

  Dante swore. "What can we expect from the six towns? The farmlands?"

  "Most of the crops were burned or pillaged. Gladdic didn't come to occupy. He came to exterminate."

  "Send riders out anyway. Bring back anything the towns can spare. In the meantime, get somebody to show me to one of the fields. Potatoes would be best."

  She gave him a curious look, then left the manor. Feeling a slight twinge of guilt, Dante wolfed down the rest of his food. The Keeper returned with a dusty youngster dressed in the plain, baggy clothing of Collenese farmers. Under other circumstances, the farmer likely would have appeared of man's age, but as he stared wordlessly at Dante, blinking repeatedly, he came off as about twelve years old.

  Dante scowled, catching on: the man believed he was looking at a divine being. "Remember your business."

  The young man nodded once, by instinct, then again, understanding. He led Dante to the plaza at the top of the road up the side of the butte. The day before, it had been the site of a pitched battle of ethermancers, infantry, and demons. Today, the bodies and much of the debris had been hauled off, but blood stained the paving setts, the color turning rusty as it aged.

  They headed down the switchbacks. Life had returned to the town at the bottom of the plateau. Soldiers sat beneath awnings sharpening their blades, casting occasional glances at the lookouts posted on the road up the side of the butte.

  The farmer took a dirt trail out of town, then stopped, looking mortified. "We don't got horses. Should I get some? Lord?"

  "By the time you find them, and bring them back here, and we ride out, will we have gotten there sooner than if we'd simply walked?"

  Panic flashed in the boy's eyes. "It's less than a mile. But I thought—"

  "That I'm too delicate to use my own legs?"

  The boy nodded hard and took up a brisk walk. Dante glared at the back of his head. Counterintuitively, it was much harder to get simple things done when the people serving you were terrified of being smote.

  It was a beautiful morning, though, making it difficult to stay mad: some warmth in the air, though not unpleasantly so, with the sunlight so plentiful and yellow it felt like you could scoop it up with a knife and spread it on toast. Birds twittered from the sagebrush.

  Ten minutes later, the boy brought him to a field next to a small branch of the canal system. The gray soil was so churned up it looked ready to sow, but dying plants lay everywhere, most yanked up by the roots, others trampled. Seeing them, the boy's eyes curdled with a hollow sickness.

  "Here they are." His voice wasn't much more than a whisper. "Or what's left of them."

  Dante closed his eyes and reached into the soil. Most of the potatoes had been dug up and stolen by the Mallish pillagers, but others remained, along with the broken tendrils of their roots. He got out his favorite knife, the handle made of antler carved by a norren of unsurpassed skill, and cut the back of his left arm.

  Nether shot from beneath the flattened leaves. Black motes swirled around his blood with unusual agitation. Stirred up by all the deaths the day before? Or had the presence of the Andrac given them a kick?

  He plunged the shadows into the disturbed earth. The technique was still new to him, but it took little effort to convince the nether to soak into the remaining tubers and roots. Unseen, they sprouted and expanded. Within moments, small green shoots broke the surface.

  "Ahh!" The boy stumbled back, tripping over his own heels to land in a plume of dust. He swiveled his head between the plants and Dante. "It's you that did that?"

  "We have a problem: your people are about to starve. It's a little selfish of them, wanting to eat food and everything, but I thought I would solve their problem by making some."

  He drew more and more shadows to him, channeling them into the ground and harvesting the field into an abundance of potatoes. By the time his strength flagged, the ground was carpeted with low green leaves, foretelling enough plants to feed thousands.

  Dante closed the flow of nether. "Get some workers out here. Tell them to leave one-tenth of the plants unharvested—and to be ready to pick new ones every morning."

  ~

  The next day, in addition to potatoes, he grew a patch of wheat, which was the Colleners' main staple. This grew tall and green, stalks wavering in the unsteady wind.

  "This is quite a trick, making them bigger like that," Blays said from beside him. "If you could do the same for the male anatomy, you'd be the richest man in the world."

  Dante frowned. Could the technique be used on animals as well as plants? The Kandeans hadn't seemed to know how to apply it to beasts or people, but the fact a Harvester could grow a seed into a sapling and a sapling into a tree raised the question of whether you could do something similar with flesh. Sometime, he would have to try.

  Dante let go of the nether. "The city lost nearly all of its stores and most of its crops. If I do this every day, and the towns have some to spare, that gets us closer. But to get through the winter, we'll rely on hunters bringing in deer, fishermen working the canals and the river, and foragers scooping up anything else that can be chewed by human teeth."

  "None of these activities being things we can do in the middle of a Mallish siege."

  "Not unless we start building mile-long fishing poles
."

  "So what's the solution? Start eating each other? May I nominate we start with the old and the weak?"

  "We'll have to hope we can buy grain from Parth. Or fish from the Strip."

  "The Strip?"

  "The coast south of Averoy. Several small cities, all of them independent. They'll sell to us." He grimaced up at the butte. "Although we might have to ask for a loan. The granaries weren't the only thing the Mallish looted."

  He trudged uphill. As he entered the plaza at the top of the road, a girl of about fifteen years ran up to him, tugging a younger boy along behind her. He was smiling, but the girl looked like she was staring down from the edge of a cliff she knew she had to jump.

  "Mr. Galand. Your lordship." She made a curtsey.

  Deciding it would be rude to walk around her, he came to a stop. "Can I help you?"

  "Well, that's the thing. My brother Earl, he's slow. In the head. I was hoping that maybe you could fix him."

  "He was hurt during the fighting?"

  "No, sir. Born like this." She dropped Earl's hand, cheeks reddening. "My parents used to take care of him. But we lost them. I can't do my work and look after him."

  Dante grunted. "Why would you think I can change him?"

  "I heard about the miracle, sir."

  "The miracle."

  "You regrew the crops the soldiers destroyed. I thought if you could do that, you could help my brother, too."

  His heart sagged in his chest. He wished he'd followed his instinct to walk past her. "If he was born like this, there's probably nothing I can do. But I'll try."

  She smiled, a fragile thing, and stepped to the side. Earl was still grinning, meeting Dante's eyes before dropping his gaze to Dante's shoulder. Dante moved his mind into the shadows, following them to the matter within the boy's skull. He'd examined plenty of brains, attached to both the living and the dead, and though he believed they were the seat of consciousness—perhaps where the trace resided, or the ether that comprised the soul—he had learned no more about them than any other organ.