Wisdom Lost

by Michael Sliter

  “Remy!” Meri’s vision was beginning to clear, and she could see Marius fighting with the skill of a master and the fury of a berserker. He was taking on two opponents simultaneously, not at all impeded by the heavy snow on the ground. Both wielded strange spears that each had a large point on one side and a serrated blade on the other. Marius did not wait to see how these men fought with the weapons. With his short sword in one hand and a dagger in his other, he batted aside a weak attack from his first assailant and slashed at the unguarded hand of the other.

  “Stay away from my brother!” he roared with the fury of Ultner.

  The second man dropped his spear in surprise and took a foot of steel in his chest as a result. The blade was stuck, though, and Remy abandoned it as he leapt back from the first attacker’s spinning attack. Remy drew a second dagger and feigned throwing it, causing the attacker to raise his guard. Remy flung his second dagger, point first, into his opponent’s gut and finished the job by hammering the dagger home with a well-placed kick.

  Lisan had also begun to recover her vision, but found that her bow string, abused by the cold and damp despite her care, snapped under the pressure of a draw. With a curse, she fumbled with her pack and pulled out another string. Ill’Nath stood in front of her, waving his club about with abandon and forcing distance between the attackers and the cart. One man lay dead at his feet.

  One brown-cloaked man.

  Now that Merigold had regained some of her senses, she realized that these weren’t members of the Sun Guard—not one of the many patrols that had been pursuing them. The cloaked men all wore dark cloth masks, and their faces couldn’t be seen. Were they simply bandits? Was her party in the wrong place at the wrong time? But their spears were outlandish, and they seemed to be far too skilled for the average bandit.

  And then there was that woman of power, standing near the fringes of the battle.

  She alone did not wear a mask. Silver-blonde hair like Merigold’s own fluttered in the moonslight, and her sharp-featured face was of an even lighter complexion. A lithe man, perhaps her bodyguard, stood at her side, his hands concealed in the pockets of the robe he wore. Her nerring was near blinding, and so much different from what Merigold had seen before. It felt wild—fit to bursting, even. She approached one of the evergreens and leaned on it, her bare hands caressing the rough bark as one would a lover. The needles of the tree began to turn to ash, blowing in the direction of Merigold’s party.

  Meri remembered Dunmore then, and the ashy mist that filled the ruined cities. The dead and dying trees, including her and Sandra’s willow. She remembered Ferl’s Company, and his band of mages who’d cut down the front ranks of the Rostanian Army. This woman was a greenie, and a powerful one at that.

  “Merigold, if you plan on doing something, now would be the time,” Lisan hissed. She had finally managed to restring her bow with numb fingers, and shot an arrow at the woman. Without any visible motion, the metsika created a green, glowing barrier that jumped into existence just long enough to disintegrate the missile.

  In retaliation, the woman launched a flurry of tiny, glowing needles in their direction. Merigold and Lisan both threw themselves flat while Ill’Nath managed to position an attacker between him and this mage. Remy, however, did not see the magical attack, embroiled as he was with an equally-matched opponent, a small and agile man wielding one of those dual-headed spears. Both were knocked off their feet by the needles and fell to the snow. Neither rose.

  Ill’Nath’s assailant also fell, pierced from behind by the needles, and Ill’Nath took a wound in the shoulder. He grunted in pain, but kept his feet. Behind where Meri lay in the snow, she could hear her horse scream in pain and panic before it tumbled to the ground, flailing its legs and kicking Meri hard in her leg. It hurt, but Meri had lived through too much worse pain to let something like this distract her.

  “Monga!” screamed the bodyguard in an unfamiliar language. “Monga! Endo feren!”

  The woman flinched and directed her attention at Ill’Nath, Lisan, and Meri as they scrambled to form a defensive perimeter. Though only five spear-wielding attackers still stood, they had no chance of fighting off another spray of needles or worse. Merigold gripped the leg of the injured Grumpy and began to draw, her head throbbing.

  She had never drawn from an animal before, not that she remembered. The maenen was similar—surprising similar—to what she felt from humans, and yet incredibly distinct. There were fewer memories and more sensations… impressions.

  She felt a fearful sensation of being confined, though her spirit would soar. She felt the weight of an ungrateful burden. And she felt a driving need to be free and a drowning fear that prevented her from trying.

  On instinct, Merigold shaped Grumpy’s maenen into a great red plate that she placed in front of her party. A second later, the disc shuddered as a wave of needles crashed into the other side, sounding like a furious rain splattering against a tin roof. Merigold gritted her teeth, straining to maintain the shield. She reshaped it; instead of a plate, she created a triangular cone like the beak of a bird.

  Another spray of needles, these ones more like nails, connected with her shield. Instead of it fully absorbing the blows, it sent the nails ricocheting off into every direction, crashing into trees and skidding through the snow. Lisan ducked around the shield and released an arrow with the happy sound of a death cry. She took cover again as another, more direct and powerful barrage struck the shield.

  Merigold exerted herself to reshape the barrier, repairing the chipped and damaged pieces. More than before, she felt stretched as she served as a conduit of maenen, drawing it from the horse and into her nerring, and then shaping it directly. She felt like the transition hallway in the Yetranian chapel—stomped on by a hundred feet with a constant shifting of temperature as people entered and left. It was exhausting.

  Another barrage, and Merigold fell to her knees. Her whole world was this shield, was maintaining it and keeping them alive. Her body was the incarnation of pressure, of tension. Her nerring was pain, and the instinctual sensations of Grumpy became stronger and stronger. She knew true fear, a sense of learned helplessness and of inescapable fate. The smothering feeling urged her to give up, to stop the fight. Her death, the end of a useless and servile life, was imminent, and it would have no impact on the world one way or another. Dropping the shield would be easy. So easy.

  But something within Merigold fought this sensation. She’d known despair before. The hollow, dark despair of a cellar. The foggy and disbelieving despair of losing her friends and family. The personal and bloody despair of a lost child.

  This would not break her. Merigold rose back to her feet as the launched nails transformed into a concentrated beam of power, drilling through the center of her barrier. Her efforts were focused on bolstering her shield, and she held. By Yetra’s fucking perfect tits, she held against this woman, this skilled and powerful metsika of unknown origins.

  However, holding was not enough. Her fuel was rapidly being depleted; there was little maenen left in Grumpy, and he was bleeding profusely from his wounds. Either his nerring would deteriorate or his heart would stop. And then they would be defenseless.

  There was no shortage of trees to fuel this woman’s own assault.

  Abruptly, just as Grumpy was about to give out, the attack halted. There were screams and the sounds of battle from behind her opaque barrier, and Merigold had no choice but to release the shield, her legs quivering as she lost her connection with Grumpy’s maenen. She took a few fumbling steps and leaned against the cart.

  The woman of power lay dead, a white-fletched arrow sticking from her ear and somehow focusing attention on a bright green gemstone in her ear, standing clear against the flowing blood. Two other arrows were lodged in her side, making her resemble the pincushion that Merigold kept in her room for mending Ragen’s shirts. A Sun Guard stood over the woman, driving a sword into her chest just to confirm her death.

  Their pursu
ers had caught up with them, at last.

  The woman’s bodyguard ineffectually fought off two Sun Guard soldiers, each one of them swinging long swords in practiced unison to dismantle their target. Several other Sun Guard battled their assailants in a pitched battle. The tide had turned in an instant, with the Sun Guard outnumbering the attackers two to one. Ill’Nath, with little hesitation, jumped into the fray, blindsiding a Sun Guard with a club to the side of the head and then taking on another, a huge man near his size. Lisan, on her last arrow, carefully took aim and caught a Sun Guard in the mouth, sending him reeling backwards in a spray of blood.

  Behind the Sun Guard, Merigold could see a familiar face. At least, half of a familiar face. The right side of Tinto was familiar; he was a graciously handsome man, his delicate features drawn in a firmly serious line. The left side of his face, though, was a disaster of flesh. Even in the low-light, Merigold could see the damage she had done to him—melted flesh poorly sewn together, pulling tight the skin around his eye and mouth and giving him the grotesque look of a child’s nightmare. He barked orders at his men, trying to coordinate an assault on two separate forces. The battle was largely turning into a free-for-all.

  Merigold took the opportunity to check on Marius, who lay in the bloodied snow a few feet away. Merigold could not help but cover her mouth. His body was a ruin, punctured by countless needles in his chest, stomach, arms, and face. The needles had dissipated, but every inch of Marius was covered in welling, oozing blood which was made worse by the cold. Worst of all, he still lived, gasping and wheezing for breath through his pierced lungs. Helpless to aid him, Merigold dabbed at his face with the edges of her coat. She started when he spoke.

  “You are my brother’s killer,” Marius wheezed and gurgled.

  “I am… yes.” Why lie to a dying man? Why lie to herself?

  “It was not your fault. It was an accident.”

  Merigold gripped his blood-slick hand, feeling warm tears flow down her face in stark contrast to the freezing night. “I am so sorry.”

  “You must protect him…. He might recover…” Marius said in barely a whisper.

  “I will. I promise,” Merigold said with quivering lips. There was no hate in this simple man, this peerless warrior. No accusation. Only love for his brother.

  A great bellow pulled Merigold’s attention away from the dying Sestrian. Just as the Sun Guard had mowed down the attackers, Ill’Nath and Lisan had cut a bloody swath through the Sun Guard. There was only one man left standing: Captain Tinto.

  “Ill’Nath, stop this!” Merigold commanded him, her voice carrying a strength that she did not feel. The big islander hesitantly lowered his club while Tinto remained in an easy fighter’s stance, the tip of his short sword resting in the snow. Lisan stood back, her own sword bloodied from the battle.

  “You.” Tinto glared at Merigold with the face of a devil. “You! Do you recall me, Ardian? Because I will never forget you.” His voice, so firm and cultured before, was lispy and nasally, betraying a lack of teeth in half of his mouth.

  “How can I forget? You were the officer who was trying to unjustly arrest us after your guards sliced up an innocent man,” Merigold replied, as if that story would assuage her guilt over the massacre.

  “An innocent man? How would you know? You know nothing of our lives, of our people. It could have been an innocent man who ran his mouth. Or, he could have been a serial murderer, finally caught, if only by happenstance. The fact remains—you did not know. You have no context with which to judge us.”

  “Tell me now, then, Captain. Clarify this murder for me,” Merigold said, recalling the man’s memories, the loss of his children. Tinto chuckled without humor, his features twisting with the pain of the simple movement.

  “You are a persistent one, aren’t you? Persistent and carelessly powerful. I imagine you have left many dead bodies in your wake, wild one. My men killed that civilian because they are scared. Every sideways glance, every bitter word under their breath, could be the face of rebellion. We have being whittled down, and now we finally have found our enemy.” Tinto slogged through the muck and crouched down next to the body of the metsika’s protector. He ripped off the cloth mask, revealing a pale, feminine face. More than pale, the skin was near white, much like the small patches of untouched snow around them. The woman’s features were pointed, harkening back to the castaway who’d gutted Cryden.

  She was Menogan.

  “Who are these people?” Merigold asked, though she knew part of the answer. Tinto shook his head wryly.

  “I do not know. They are from far away, to the west, and they do not speak our language. They are the ones who have been sinking our ships. They are the ones who have killed our nobility in their sleep, who tried to burn the Opal Tower. They are the ones at the heart of our unrest. As we sent our patrols out… to find you… we began coming across bands of these people. They have been burning towns and villages, ambushing the good people of Rafón. We’ve been hunting them as much as they have been hunting us.” Tinto kicked the fallen metsika with a sudden flash of anger.

  “And where are the pasnes alna through all this?” Tinto kicked the woman again, snapping the arrow right out of her ear. “Gone. Fled. Supporting them. Who knows? Agricorinor within the borders of our country and yet silent, taking no action and turning away our messengers! Even Telidian, advisor to the monarch, tucked his tail and ran like a fearful mongrel. The only way we can fight these magic-wielding demons is to catch them by surprise or get lucky.”

  His teeth were clenched as he held back this avalanche of just-contained rage. He was furious, clearly, but not at her and not for himself. Not even because he’d been maimed. It was because his people and countrymen were in danger. This man cared, Merigold could tell. He was not a bad person, despite the murders his men had committed in fear.

  “So, it wasn’t us, then. Your xenophobia was unfounded,” interrupted Lisan, who was busying herself collecting arrows from the fallen bodies nearby. Ill’Nath remained cautious and ready to strike, should Tinto make a move.

  Tinto sighed and shook his maimed head, almost sadly. “It doesn’t matter, Ardian. You killed a dozen of my Sun Guards. Not just killed, but you cut a scar into the memory of Polanice. Even would I call off the search, the Sun Guard would not listen. I understand our mistake—that you have nothing to do with this threat—but you could not convince the Sun Guard otherwise. If only you had simply accompanied us to the Opal Tower without resisting, you would be free on your journey by now.”

  Lisan’s eyes flung daggers at Ill’Nath, but the big islander either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

  “Speaking of, we should be on our way,” Merigold said, laying a hand on Ill’Nath’s arm. The islander did not take his eyes from the captain. His thoughts were clear. Cut off the head, and the body dies. Merigold knew otherwise. Cut off this head, and the body would just get stronger. And, she would not have yet another death on her conscience.

  “Agreed,” Lisan said, her voice as calm as a bird gliding on thermal rises. “Captain, I apologize for your losses here today. And for your losses in Polanice. But, know that if you continue your pursuit, we will fight you. There will be more death, and we both know you do not want that. Ill’Nath, come now. Let’s be away from this bloody place.”

  The three turned their backs on Captain Tinto and his mutilated face, leaving him standing alone amidst the bodies of his friends and enemies. Ill’Nath stopped to gather Marius’ corpse in his arms and add yet another body to their wagon.

  “If you strike out for Agricorinor, which is what I suspect…” lisped Tinto, “…tell them to please send help to Rafón. The monarch knows, we need it.”

  They would be safe in Agricorinor.

  It was about as likely as Yetra dropping down from Harmony and giving Meri a hug and a plate of Ragen’s stew.

  Chapter 26

  “Well, I be thinking it’s a big fucking mistake,” Paston said, grinding his teeth. He’d
been doing that lately, in the time that they’d basically been confined to Sebiant Rhisfel.

  “I’m not seeing another choice,” Alwyn argued. “If we ever want to get out of this fucking rock, you’re going to have to meet with him. I have no doubt it will be a spectacle, from what I’ve heard whispered about you.”

  “It will be a fucking trap,” grumbled Enric, working at his skull with a dry razor. The blood streaming down his scalp did little to deter the man from sheering the hair from every inch of his head, however. People leaned into their habits even more when stressed, Hafgan knew. It was probably why he himself had been training so hard, ten hours a day. Driving his men like a slave master, pushing them beyond their capabilities for weeks now.

  His budredda, all three dozen of them, had been made hard during their march with the Rostanian Army. They’d been made lean during their march through the Tulanques. And they were being made strong through their time in Hafgan’s Anvil, as some of the newest budredda called it.

  It was an apt name, given that their little assembly chamber was lined with a blue-specked iron ore that gleamed throughout the day as light flickered through the vents, reflected by mirrors. Each morning, he lined them up for increasingly-complex calisthenics—practicing balance and strength, stretching their muscles and expanding their reach. Then, they practiced formation fighting and more human tactics, fighting together as a unit and responding to commands. Most seemed bored by this style, but Hafgan knew that the Wasmer were generally unfamiliar with formation fighting. Not that he expected things to come to arms, of course, but it always helped to be prepared.

  Then, they would move to sparring, one-on-one battling with padded spears. They would form three circles, with the winner staying in the center. Paston never lasted long, though Enric was one of the best. Jenyn was his greatest fighter—a short, slim Wasmer who seemed to instantly memorize a new move or tactic after only seeing it a single time. He’d joined up after the gwagen attack, simply wanting to return to the mountains. But, though he’d yet to shave down his teeth, he’d found himself a happy home among the budredda. He rarely spoke, but often smiled.