by A R R Ash
Shayala ignored her wounds in her pursuit of the fleeing archer, whose trail, in his haste, was not difficult to follow. Nevertheless, she gained no ground on him. And if another patrol was in the area, she would have no hope of overcoming them all. She had to stop him quickly.
*
Although the archer had arrows yet remaining, he ran eastward. His duty was to relay that his troop had located the imposter queen and lead reinforcements to her location. Still, he considered the perplexing battle: this woman appeared human but impressed as strigoi on his other senses. In fact, all the humans seemed to fight well beyond their capability.
*
With his heightened vision, Sar-Kyul had little difficulty navigating the boles and avoiding low-hanging branches while following the trail of Shenla and the monster. Unfortunately, the blood did nothing to alleviate the pain in his arm. Still, he did seem to be making gains upon his quarry.
*
The fleeing archer knew he would find no aid nearby, and his relentless pursuer showed no sign of slowing. Who was she? Shayala is dead; that cannot be her. An impersonator? But why would a feral human impersonate the deceased queen? Alternatively, what would a strigoi gain among the company of feral humans? And what strigoi could tolerate them? No, whatever she is, she cannot be strigoi. A dhampyr? As far as he knew, such a creature had not existed for some time.
If she is no strigoi, why should I flee? His pride began to contend with his duty. The former argued that the latter did not entail only conveying her location but capturing or killing her, if possible. And why should I not claim the honor for her death or capture?
Upon nearing the sturdy lower boughs of an old oak, he leapt and grasped the branch, pulling himself up. With his back against the trunk, he withdrew a stoppered, silver flask, sheathed in leather, from a belt pouch. He removed the cork and, after retrieving two arrows from his quiver, carefully dipped the arrowheads into the flask. They emerged coated in a viscous red liquid. He set one arrow beside him, and the other he nocked and sighted down its length, waiting for his target. Even if she were only a dhampyr, there was no sense in taking unnecessary risk.
*
Shayala could hear someone closing behind her, though she was upwind of this shadow, and her vivisense perceived no one. Could one of the other strigoi have broken from the attack? Or could another enemy have been lying in wait? Whatever the case, she could not lose the trail of the archer.
*
Sar-Kyul caught fleeting glimpses of Shenla before she was again obscured by trees. He called to her.
Shayala recognized the voice, glanced back, and slowed her pace. Once Sar-Kyul reached her, said she, “We must catch him.”
Although he had a great many questions, Sar-Kyl understood there would be time enough for them later. He nodded and resumed the chase, soon outpacing his more injured companion.
Sar-Kyul was not certain how he anticipated the arrow, whether it was the sound of the bowstring, the susurration of its flight, or the change in the flow of the air. He instinctively lunged to his left. Although the projectile missed his heart, he had not reacted swiftly enough to avoid it entirely, and the tip penetrated his chest, just below his right shoulder, ripping skin and tearing muscle. Sar-Kyul fell, wailing, breathing in short, heavy breaths, his body tensed and arched.
*
Shayala saw Sar-Kyul fall under the arrow and so was prepared for the one that followed. She raised her buckler to intercept the missile and quickly closed upon the archer, who judged he had no time to nock another arrow. He dropped from his perch and drew his sword.
Seeing the fEarlress woman charging toward him, he questioned his decision to confront her. He did not have long to reconsider that judgment. Shayala accepted his blow upon her shield and lopped off his head with a swipe of her longsword.
Before the head had even landed, Shayala turned toward the writhing human. Sar-Kyul flinched at her approach. That flinch inspired within Shayala the consideration of possibilities regarding Sar-Kyul’s continued usefulness, now that he was likely aware of her true nature.
If she did not finish him, he might try to turn others against her or, once healed, strike against her himself. If she finished him, she would be forced to deal with the Silver Blades herself; based upon their prejudices, this offered small likelihood of success. And without the Silver Blades, her efforts among the humans would be wasted and her chance to recover her throne lost.
As she could not feed upon him, due to his dhampyric lineage, she regretted she could not even avail of his service as a thrall. If she could convince him their goals still aligned, they may be able to maintain their tenuous alliance, at least in the short-term.
All of this flashed through her thoughts in an instant.
Looking into the eyes of this woman who was somehow both human and monster, Sar-Kyul fought to steady his breathing and master the trembling of his body. He slid a hand to a dagger at his belt, prepared to make his last act one of dignity and defiance—and revenge.
Shayala dropped the tip of her sword into the dirt, discarded the buckler, and crouched beside the human. “Do not bother,” she whispered, “you could not hope to overcome me now.”
To Sar-Kyul, wounded and on his back, the statement seemed indisputable. His hand fell away from the dagger. Although he thought the answer clear, he asked, “What are you?”
Shayala did not answer. One gloved hand gripped the arrow near his chest and the other snapped the shaft, just above the puncture. Although his blood would not prove deadly from mere contact, as it must penetrate the skin, she was especially careful. She threw the broken shaft aside and paused, scarcely believing the position in which she found herself: endangering her own life to save that of a human. Never before could she have conceived of such a scenario.
“How do you survive the light?” Sar-Kyul asked, taking her silence as confirmation of his conclusion.
Sidestepping the question, Shayala answered, “As should be apparent, I have no ill intent toward you, though I will explain everything in time. For now, we must have you tended if you are to survive.” She stood and effortlessly pulled the burly human to his feet.
Sar-Kyul said, more harshly than he intended, “I can walk.” He gasped and clenched his fists and ground his teeth against the pain, but he moved unaided.
Shayala tacitly commended Sar-Kyul’s strength and will; he would have made a worthy strigoi.
For his part, Sar-Kyul fought against a lifetime of experience that impelled him to strike out against this monstrosity, to attack while she was unprepared and unprotected. Rationally, he knew he would be unable to draw a khopesh before she finished him, and he had the uncomfortable feeling his injuries were not all that stayed his hand.
The plodding trek back to the site of the ambush provided them with opportunity to further speak of their awkward predicament.
“You haven’t answered my question,” Sar-Kyul said.
“Do I need to?”
“Yes,” Sar-Kyul said through gnashing teeth as a pulse of pain caused a spasm in his arm. “What are you?”
“Very well. I am strigoi.” At his questioning look, Shayala explained, “Our term for ourselves.”
That statement was like a rock fallen atop Sar-Kyul’s chest: although he had known the truth, hearing it confirmed drove the air from his lungs and nearly knocked him from his feet. Again, he considered a surprise attack and, again, dismissed the notion for reasons beyond his infirmity. The ensuing silence stretched beyond the length of good form.
Finally, Sar-Kyul asked, “What do you want? Why do you pose as human? How—” He grunted in pain. “How do you survive?”
Now comes the test of whether we can reach some understanding to continue this arrangement, Shayala thought. A test we must both pass lest doom befalls us both.
She had not expected to have this conversation, and her mind flashed with possible explanations and justifications. Lies that take root in the truth are the most effective. Shayala
answered, “I am part of a minority among my kind who would see humans and strigoi live harmoniously.”
Sar-Kyul gave her a disbelieving look, asked, “Then why did you not say so?”
Now, she looked at him incredulously, asked, “And how would you have greeted me?”
He did not respond, as both recognized the obvious answer.
She continued, “You cannot deny the advantage I have given you by revealing the power of our blood.”
Sar-Kyul nodded in concession. The blood gave the free tribes a real opportunity to defend themselves and even strike against the monsters—the strigoi. “How does the sun not affect you?”
Shayala thought—and nearly began—to answer that she was unique among her kind in possessing such an immunity. However, she quickly reconsidered, concluding that another lie would better suit her purpose by instilling more cause for fear in this human. “I am one of a new evolution of strigoi that can persist in the sun. Once enough of us exist, you will be overrun. If we are to succeed, delay is no longer an option.”
“And what role are the free tribes to play in this scheme? You could have simply shared the truth of the blood and been gone.”
“I have explained your role. Our group is too small to overcome the power of the Court, and it is not unreasonable to expect that you fight for yourselves as well.”
They continued in silence for some time while Sar-Kyul ruminated upon all that she had revealed. He reeled from a dizziness born of more than just his wounds. His very worldview was herein tested and upended. Small things—her fighting ability, her seeming indefatigability, the strange manner animals reacted to her—which were an oddity before, now seemed far more suggestive and ominous.
He doubted whether he could bring himself to trust her, though she had had ample opportunity to kill him and others, and she had provided them with weapons and blood and—I’ve never seen her eat.
“Dorn’s disappearance!” Sar-Kyul blurted. “The attacks—you were responsible. Ryz’k was correct after all.”
Shayala suppressed her impulse to answer sharply. In a tone of deliberate temperance, she answered, “I was not responsible for Dorn; the most likely explanation is what you already determined. As for the attacks, as you know, the raids have grown more common for some time.”
“These attackers knew you,” he pressed.
The further her deception stretched, the more likely it would be discovered. Shayala began to wonder if he would push too far and she would be left with no choice but to kill him. “Most likely, the Court has somehow learned of my intentions here and sent them to silence me.”
Still Sar-Kyul was not satisfied. “How do you feed?”
Shayala turned to look at him, her patience with his questioning reaching its end, though she still resisted every urge to commit violence. “Upon lower animals, though they are an inferior source of nourishment.”
She was spared further agitation when they came upon the remains of the battle. While Sar-Kyul stood resting against a tree, Shayala inventoried the bodies. She confirmed six headless strigoi and nineteen human carcasses; one human yet lived, though he was sorely—likely, mortally—wounded.
The survivor planted the tip of his sword in the ground and used it to brace himself as he rose. Sar-Kyul trudged over to stand before him and gripped his wrist.
“You have done well,” Sar-Kyul complimented.
“I feared you were lost and I would die of thirst or fill the belly of some beast,” the survivor responded. His body shook as he fought to remain standing, and his eyes remained wide and darting as if expecting more enemies at any moment. Blood matted the left side of his face; a gash ran the length of his left arm. The right leg of his trousers was torn and showing the white of fat beneath.
Sar-Kyul shook his head. “We must be gone from here. We can ask the Silver Blades to retrieve the bodies in the morning.” Sar-Kyul turned, and only then did the realization of the fled horses dawn upon him.
Shayala noticed his roving gaze. “I will retrieve them.”
In their flight, the horses had taken with them the offerings for the Silver Blades.
Easily trailing the distinctive, sweaty smell of the beasts, Shayala set off and quickly disappeared among the trees. She followed not only the equine scent but that of silver from the weapons and vials. The first horse she found had turned its leg upon a root and struggled, its foreleg horribly twisted. Having fed on nothing in nearly two days save for low beasts, Shayala paused long enough to feed upon the horse, ending its pain and offering her some relief from hunger.
At her approach to the second horse, the beast bolted, though the forest did not afford it the space to gallop. Such was a hazard of her tracking the animals. Whenever she neared, they would flee under risk of a crippling injury; nevertheless, the two humans were in no condition to retrieve the beasts themselves. Before it injured itself, Shayala managed to restrain, then pacify, the animal. She led the mount back to the site of the battle, where she tied its reins to a tree. Without sparing any words, she left again, returning with another beast; then once more, bringing back with her the animal that bore several giftful sacks for the Silver Blades. She never recovered Sar-Kyul’s cestuses.
The humans, weary beyond exhaustion and nearly incapacitated from trauma, sat propped against trees. Shayala left the recovered sacks beside Sar-Kyul and, in an overwhelming rush, seized the second human and pulled him down into a thicket. Despite having fed upon the horse, this human would prove far more nourishing.
He screamed briefly, then abruptly fell silent. Shayala felt the healing warmth, the only thermal sensation that her kind ever experienced, spread throughout her body and push back the hunger in a vitalizing wave. Although her wounds would still require rest to heal fully, she was sated and reinvigorated.
Upon emerging from the thicket, having left a headless carcass behind her, she was met by a swaying Sar-Kyul, struggling to keep the tip of his khopesh pointed upward. “You are a monster,” he spat with undisguised disgust. With the knowledge of what she had just done, his throat burned at the musky smell wafting upon the nightly breeze.
“Put up your weapon,” Shayala responded, unconcerned. “You could not best a child in your condition.”
“At least I will fall in battle,” said he, lurching toward Shayala.
“And your death will be wasted,” Shayala replied, making no move to defend herself. “You know he would not have long survived. At least his death served a purpose. We do not know what we will yet face, either in our journey or once we reach the camp, and he could have offered no assistance in any crisis.”
Sar-Kyul did not lower his weapon, for his conscience rebelled at any justification for what she had done, though he did not strike. No rationale could excuse such a murder. Yet what purpose would his death serve at this moment? For she would return to the Moroi Hunters, with all still ignorant of her nature, and persuade them to send another company. Or if they refused, would she turn upon them? No, he had the duty to safeguard his newfound knowledge and strike against her when circumstances allowed.
Shayala observed the turmoil play across his face. “Do not allow your short-sighted morality to lead to the destruction of your people.”
Sar-Kyul could not find the strength for argument, let alone battle. He was depleted and dropped to the ground, his head hung low.
Shayala said, “I am not so naïve as to think you have acquitted me. I warn you, if you think to assuage your conscience by revealing my nature, recognize you have endorsed me and what I offer. To expose me will end your leadership, if not your life.”
Sar-Kyul did not respond. He had considered the same possibility, though he could not say now how he would act when the time was come. He sheathed his blade and forced himself to his feet. He was spent, mind and body, but would accept no assistance as he struggled to mount the horse.
Shayala seized the reins of the third horse, which bore the packs.
Without looking at Shayala, Sar-Kyul
said, “Let’s go.”
*
When the cantonment of the Silver Blades came into view, Sar-Kyul could barely maintain his grasp on the reins, let alone remain upright, even at their easy gait. Yet through a combination of will and rote, he managed to stay seated upon his mount.
The camp was surrounded by a dry ditch and a rampart, atop which stood a sturdy, seven-foot-tall palisade. Warriors patrolled atop a wooden wall-walk. A single strip of level terrain, wide enough for four horses to enter side by side, spanned the ditch and split the rampart. A double-doored wooden gate controlled traffic into the settlement. Upon either side flew a pennant depicting a chevron formed by two silver-bladed swords, tips touching, and a fanged skull between them, all upon a blood-red field.
Sar-Kyul and Shayala passed beyond the trees and into a wide plain, where four grim-faced vedettes rode out to intercept them, while another mounted sentry spoke to the guards above the parapet. The wait was not long before the double doors swung open and a heavily armed contingent of warriors emerged.
“Come no farther, and name yerselves,” came the order from the warrior walking at the fore.
If the others were grim, this man was thoroughly grisly, with a face of pockmarks and crisscrossed scars. A white trench in his goatee split his lower lip, such that his yellowing teeth were visible even when his mouth was closed. His graying hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail, displaying his widow’s peak. He wore a hauberk—the first metal armor Shayala had seen among the feral humans—and carried a double-bladed axe.
A half-circle of warriors extended around Sar-Kyul and Shayala, training arrows or spears upon the mounted duo.